Coincidence, chance or choice
by Aegis Enforcer
Summary: Begins from a dark world where events of great importance have gone very wrong. A sole survivor from the doomed timeline puts the fate of their dimension into his crazy time-travel plan. Initially goofy, but eventual godlike grey Naruto, with goofy elements whenever possible. Will follow close to canon when necessary. No pairings in mind yet. Alt/timeline... Alt/universe...
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer- I do not own Naruto, Naruto Shippuden or any of its characters…**

 **First of all, this is a what-if story, but with a more comprehensive outlook into the butterfly effect. How the life would have changed if a single event, in the beginning, or in the end, had differed, how it would affect the timeline. This is also going to be a grey yet fun story with a lot of conversations, strips of comedy and some rare mind-blowing action sequences. If you are a SasuSaku or a NaruSaku fan or if you even prefer Sasuke and Sakura, please leave immediately, this story isn't for you. I won't bash Sasuke or Sakura much, but needless to say, the story won't be centred on or around them. Alternate Universe… Alternate Reality…**

 **To be frank, in this story, Naruto will become a badass grey protagonist, in time. I believe all stories should be minimally realistic yet in an absolutely unbelievable way, it shouldn't be written, it should be developed. I dig the idea of using the most commonly used cliché filled ideas for stories and then give it a semi-lifelike background to build upon.**

 **In my opinion, Kishimoto should have named the series as Sasuke instead of Naruto, if so; he would have had a better reason to justify his blatant favouritism towards the Uchiha in general. However, it is his story, so he can write it any way he wants to write and so this is my fanfic and I can write it any way I want.**

* * *

 _ **Age of Tsukuyomi: Year 25-**_

A fifty-six-year-old spiky silver-haired man clad in dark blue pants, a long-sleeve shirt and a black armoured flak jacket was lying on his bed with his eyes closed. Atop his left eye, there was a vertical scar; the lower half of his face was covered with a mask that covered up to his nose. He was none other than the famed shinobi of the moniker Copy Ninja Kakashi.

The entire world was stuck in the Infinite Tsukuyomi and there was no way to dispel it because the one person who could do it was dead. His wayward former student Sasuke Uchiha was dead and with him, the Rinnegan too had died. As of this day, it's been twenty-five years since the Genjutsu had been cast on this world. He had endured twenty-five years of isolation, more than two decades of loneliness, all because his arrogant student couldn't see reason.

All of this was a result of one crucial day's event. Still today, he can remember that fateful day to its very last detail.

* * *

 _ **Valley of the End-**_

 _The legendary battle between Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha had taken a pause when Naruto's ultimate technique, the Six Paths: Ultra-Big Ball Rasenshuriken had taken a head-on collision with Sasuke's ultimate technique, the Indra's Arrow. The resultant blast was so titanic that it completely stripped off Naruto's Senjutsu enhanced Tailed-Beast Mode and Sasuke's Indra Susanoo. Having been stripped of their respective prowess both fell down to the floor of an almost-destroyed Valley of the End._

" _Ugh…" Sasuke grunted furiously as he struggled to get up from the ground because the explosion had stripped away the Indra Susanoo, and all the tailed-beast chakra with it, he got on all fours but his legs failed him as he stumbled down once again._

 _The Uchiha looked up only to see as the dust cleared, far away in the distance, Naruto was exactly opposite to him supporting himself up on one knee with his body straight._

 _Naruto took deep breaths; he was so tired that he didn't have any energy left within him, "Sasuke, stop this…"_

 _Sasuke focused his left eye on his former teammate and channelled chakra, "Amaterasu..." In the distance, Naruto raised his right hand to block the black flames and his arm was suddenly on fire._

 _He pulled on Kurama's chakra and the level 1 Kurama chakra cloak appeared and slipped the Amaterasu flames off his hand._

 _Sasuke bellowed angrily as he clutched on his right eye which stung as if several needles were piercing into his eye, "Why don't you just die?"_

 _"Sasuke, stop...!"_

 _"No…! I will destroy and create this world as I see fit. This world only deserves my new world order."_

 _And then, there was silence, it prevailed for a few minutes in the destroyed valley._

" _Will my life satisfy you, Sasuke? Will it redeem you? Will that, give this world another chance?" Naruto asked tiredly as if he had enough of everything._

" _Is that all that you can offer me, Naruto?" The Uchiha asked angrily._

" _Yes…!" Naruto replied sadly yet frankly, but he continued further, "Will you give our world another chance if I give my life in return for it?"_

 _"And you'll still trust me to keep my end?"_

 _"Always..."_

 _Again silence prevailed over them as a long moment's passed, Sasuke spoke softly than before yet sounding very unsure, as he gave his answer, "Maybe…"_

 _Naruto didn't hesitate, he took his kunai almost instantly and held it to his heart, but before he stabbed himself, he gave Sasuke one final stare and smiled contently as a single tear rolled down his cheek. Naruto closed his eyes and recalled his promises, he wouldn't be becoming Hokage, he wouldn't be bringing Sasuke back to the village, and he wouldn't be there to see the peace that he promised to Nagato, Jiraiya-sensei, Obito, old man Sage and Kurama. For a moment, his resolve faltered but he quickly regained his bearings because he believed that his death would inspire Sasuke to give this world another chance and for that he felt like giving his life was worth it._

 _And then, in a flash, Naruto pulled out and punched the kunai deep into his heart. He didn't stop there as he further forced it in as he coughed up blood. Sasuke watched on in absolute shock at what had transpired in front of his very eyes. The Uchiha mustered up every bit of strength he had left in his body and ran towards the Kyuubi Jinchuriki, but just when he was three feet away, Naruto collapsed backwards as life slowly drained of his eyes._

 _Sasuke stopped still on approach; he clenched his hands and closed his eyes as only one thought went through his head,_ _"Does this world deserve Naruto's life?"_

 _Sasuke opened his eyes with a determined resolve and walked closer to his downed opponent and then he stooped down to Naruto's dying form and placed his right hand on Naruto's forehead. Sasuke used his Rinnegan's chakra absorption ability to absorb whatever chakra Naruto had left in his body and when there was no more chakra to spare; Sasuke further went on to absorbing the blonde's life-force until it was dry. As all the chakra was drained out, Naruto's healing factor stopped and so did the body's ability to regenerate and repair, while his soul left the body and moved on to the pure land._

 _Meanwhile, Kakashi's heart wrenched at seeing the 'light of their world' sacrificing himself hoping that it would redeem his wayward student. A sudden surge of determination filled the Jonin, a sense of anger coupled with a sense of duty he owed to the world and to his sensei's son. Naruto never gave up hope until the very end; he never wavered in his belief that Sasuke could be redeemed, he never doubted in his ability. It added so much more grief when he realised that Naruto's sacrifice had no effect on Sasuke, whatsoever._

 _Kakashi's regular eyes morphed into the Sharingan and then it further transformed into the Mangekyōu design with the three stretched triangles evenly spaced around the pupil that each one of the triangles curved towards the right at the very top around the eye to form a circle, making it similar to a pinwheel. His Sharingan eyes were Obito's final gift along with Naruto's brilliance, just as Obito's chakra took hold of him; Naruto used the Six Paths Yang chakra to permanently transmute both his eyes into Obito's Sharingan and strengthened his chakra core permanently, which not only matured his eyes and the chakra pathways around it, it also gave him the ability to deactivate and activate both his Sharingan eyes at will._

 _Sakura collapsed to her knees in tears as she was torn at her core. She loved Sasuke so much that she didn't have the strength to face him, but at the same time, she cared for Naruto that she wanted vengeance for Naruto's death. Furthermore, she couldn't digest the fact that Naruto's sacrifice literally had no effect on Sasuke as it didn't instigate any change._

 _Kakashi instinctively used the 'Kamui' with so much finesse that rivalled Obito's skill at peak as he warped towards Sasuke without alerting the latter in any way. Kakashi warped back to reality appearing just about ten feet away from Sasuke, that's when he heard Sasuke's comment intended for the corpse of his most talented student, which made his blood run cold, "A naïve bastard to the very end, you were…Naruto."_

 _Kakashi took a kunai out in his right hand and charged it with lighting chakra in anger because he no longer believed that his wayward student deserved to live, especially if that life came at a cost of Naruto's sacrifice. Just as he was about to take a step forward, Sasuke turned his head sideways and looked directly at him and asked mockingly, "Planning to die are you, Kakashi-sensei?"_

 _Sasuke moved his left leg backwards and twisted his body sideways as he stood battle ready taking his battle stance, knowing that his former sensei was about to engage him in combat. At this point, Sasuke didn't feel like Kakashi would be any significant threat to him even if he was beyond exhausted. And he was right to be confident because he had the Rinnegan and the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan at his disposal, he was confident that he can counter anything Kakashi may concoct to beat him. Sasuke's arrogance and overconfidence blinded him so much that he didn't notice the hand appearing via the portal behind him._

" _They say that people can see their entire life right before they die, I would like to know if that's true and I think you can clear that up for me, Kakashi." Sasuke infused chakra at the sole of his feet so that he can move at blinding speeds in order to end Kakashi once and for all. Just as Sasuke shot forward via his chakra-enhanced speed, the Uchiha suddenly stopped not one foot from his initial position as he hung in mid-air, and he looked down only to see Kakashi's hand covered in lightning sticking out through the centre of his chest._

 _Sasuke couldn't believe it; Kakashi had done the unpredictable yet again. The Uchiha stared at the Jonin standing before him, just then the man dispelled and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Sasuke thought that Kakashi had lost Obito Uchiha's eyes because both of Kakashi's eyes went back to looking normal after Kakashi's Susanoo because he knew that a non-Uchiha couldn't deactivate their Sharingan at will. He had expected so many things from Kakashi, but a combination of technique so common, and that, he hadn't prepared for…, because he was sure that Kakashi wouldn't exercise such overused techniques if at all possible especially against someone like him. Sasuke was so confident that he could now distinguish the original from a shadow clone; hence he didn't think for a second that the person he had bragged to all along was a clone. It really hurt his pride to think that he had fell prey to such simple and overused combo of jutsus. For a man who had two of the strongest of Dojutsus at his disposal, he sure was blind. The Uchiha coughed blood and all of a sudden the hole in his chest grew as the flesh was being warped away bit by bit to a pocket dimension._

 _Sasuke quickly used his Rinnegan's gravity manipulation ability to propel himself out of Kakashi's arm that was impaled in through his chest and he pushed away from Kakashi and his Kamui. Kakashi meanwhile used the repelling force of Sasuke's 'Shinra Tensei' to safely warp away into the pocket dimension once again. Kakashi was using the full extent of Kamui because now he had both of Obito's eyes and a stronger chakra core; this was what allowed him to open a portal of considerable size enough to sneak his hand out from his pocket dimension and deliver a killing blow to Sasuke all the while without losing his hand. Kakashi knew that he wouldn't be able to fight and win against Sasuke in a straight out fight, so when he warped away towards Sasuke from a distance, he made a shadow clone and sent it out through the Kamui, while he stayed inside the pocket dimension waiting for the right moment. He then converted the Kamui into a peephole and waited for the right moment. Sasuke's over-confidence made him so arrogant that he left his guard down when he shot forwards aiming to attack and that's when Kakashi capitalised on his advantage and punched Sasuke using his Raikiri; even then he didn't activate the Raikiri until the very last moment so to avoid detection._

 _Sasuke was going to use the Rinnegan's power the 'Rinne Rebirth technique' to heal his mortal wound. As a Rinnegan user, he could use this technique to resurrect anyone and to heal himself no matter how severe his injuries may be. But before he could do so, the Kamui opened yet again and Kakashi warped out of the pocket void and immediately Sasuke felt a foreign pressure in his eyes. Kakashi watched as his Kamui once again warped both of Sasuke's eyes out, and in seconds, both of Sasuke's eyes were mangled and ripped out of his eye sockets. A moment later, Sasuke fell forward on the ground, like a puppet with its strings cut, both blind and with a huge hole in his chest. Sasuke coughed up blood through his mouth as he tried to breathe, but he couldn't, and finally, after a few minutes of desperate struggling, Sasuke died an agonising death._

* * *

Kakashi opened his eyes with a deep breath as he immediately sat up on his bed in reflex. He remembered the memories of the events once again. At that time, he had destroyed Sasuke's eyes fearing that Sasuke would come back to life using the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan's ability called the 'Izanagi' or the Rinnegan's 'Rinne Rebirth' technique. He knew that Izanagi was what Madara used to come back to life after the legendary battle at the Valley of the End. He had thought that if Madara did it, what would hold Sasuke from doing the same thing, hence he decided not to take that risk when he destroyed the Rinnegan. He knew that if Sasuke survived that day, he wouldn't have been able to stop him a second time, the only reason he managed to kill Sasuke the first time was because the Uchiha was beyond the point of physical exhaustion and above all, the boy was arrogant, especially with Naruto's demise just moments prior to his attack.

However, it had come at a cost, killing Sasuke and destroying the Rinnegan had left the world in the eternal balance of the Infinite Tsukuyomi with no possible way out. However, the best thing about Sasuke's death was that it released the genjutsu on all the Tailed Beasts and that in turn gave the tailed-beasts their powers back which enabled the beasts to break out of their imprisonment.

All the Tailed Beasts that were released made their home in and around what was once a battlefield. Sasuke's death caused Sakura to walk away into the empty world alone, and he hadn't seen her since then. The tailed-beasts used their chakra collectively and connected him to the Sage of Six Paths who gave him instructions to follow. After long discussions with the Sage and all the nine tailed-beasts, they all came to the conclusion that they were going to violate the laws of space and time itself in order for them to save the world. They briefly even wondered if there was a way to bring the Sage into their world so that he can dispel the genjutsu for them, but the Sage had put that idea to rest by explaining that he can't come to the world since every avenue of possible chakra-teleportation into the living world was closed for the Sage. According to the Sage, it would take another few centuries for the man to build up enough natural chakra to make another physical transition into the living world and that he would also need a medium to do it, someone with the same genes as the Sage, reincarnates like Naruto or Sasuke.

Initially, they all had their doubts about their plan, but all their doubts came to a close when a man named Toneri Ootsutsuki came to take control of all the chakra in the world, two years into the Tsukuyomi. It took him quite a few tries to defeat the man, but with the help of all the bijuus and their chakra, he succeeded in defeating and killing the Ootsutsuki. However, from Toneri he came to know about the existence of other stronger Ootsutsuki clan members with godly prowess scattered across other dimensions waiting to take control of other lush worlds.

The Sage explained to him and the bijuus of how his mother Kaguya feared the other gods out there. It took everything he had in him to defeat Toneri and he struggled even though he had the help of all the tailed-beasts, he didn't how he would fare if he went up against other Ootsutsuki members from other worlds. And being the sole protector of the world, it was his responsibility to fight and win; he had no other choices but to win.

After the events with Toneri, all the doubts they had or might have had about their plan went out the window and they became fully involved with it afterwards, since then, they saw it as a necessity if anything else. Nevertheless, he didn't want to be unprepared if any member of the Ootsutsuki clan found the way into their world. So he trained several hours a day, every day for the last twenty-three years. He cultivated Hashirama Senju's cells from white Zetsu's tissue and grafted it to his body to get a better healing factor and to get better control over Obito's Mangekyou techniques. The tailed-beasts would often lend him chakra and replenish his reserves so that he can continue their work. He took a page from Naruto's book and used his eidetic recall along with shadow clone's memory feedback effect to get into all the hidden villages, separate clans storages and from there he found his way into the villages' jutsu vaults and clans' forbidden archives. He used the centuries of trial and error data he acquired to research on chakra, chakra natures, Fuinjutsu, ninjutsu, Kekkai ninjutsu and Jikūkan ninjutsu and so much more. And after twenty-five years of preparation, he was finally here, and at long last they were ready.

With that, he stood up and walked out of his room and to the bathroom, he freshened himself and then he walked out through the empty corridors lit by several fire-torches on the walls beside him. He reached the only door at the end of the corridor, he opened it and he walked out.

* * *

 _ **Altar of Time-**_

A huge stone altar was located at the centre of what was once a battlefield. The altar itself had a diameter of several miles. It was surrounded by lush green forests on all the sides, the huge stone altar had nine pillars equally spaced at the brim of the structure.

Kakashi diligently walked towards the stone structure's front entrance and as he walked towards the structure, one by one all the tailed-beasts proceeded towards the structure from all directions. Each one of the beasts sequentially took their respective positions around the altar just before the stone pillars that surrounded it.

Kakashi took one step into the slightly elevated stone floor of the structure and he immediately gazed to his left aiming at the one-tailed Tanuki and he began with a full bow, "Shukaku…" And the tailed-beast bowed its head back at the respect given by the shinobi.

Kakashi then straightened himself and gazed at the two-tailed Cat and spoke respectfully, "Matatabi…" The cat being honoured by the gesture bowed back to the ninja, as Shukaku had done before it.

"Isobu…" Kakashi continued with another bow and the three-tailed Turtle bowed back showing its acceptance.

"Son Gokū…" Kakashi spoke and bowed to the four-tailed Monkey and the beast bowed its head accepting Kakashi's respect.

"Kokuō…" Kakashi resumed as he turned to the five-tailed Horse and bowed, while the beast bowed its head in acceptance for Kakashi's show of respect.

The former-cyclopean sole survivor continued to respect the six-tailed Slug, "Saiken…" And the beast readily accepted Kakashi's respect and bowed back to the ninja.

"Chōmei…" Kakashi bowed in respect to the seven-tailed Beetle and the beast energetically bowed back to show its acceptance.

"Gyūki…" Kakashi followed by bowing to the eight-tailed Octopus in respect and the Ushi-oni gave its acceptance to Kakashi in the form of a short bob of its head.

Finally, Kakashi came to the nine-tailed Fox that stood taller than all the other tailed-beasts. At the time of Naruto's death, the Yin part of the fox that was sealed inside of the jinchuriki dissipated into the earth on his death and it returned to the fox. With the Yin and Yang parts merging, the Fox grew back to its original size and towered over all the beasts. Kakashi bowed to the Fox and spoke its name, "Kurama…" The fox wasted no time to bow back to the ninja.

A tall and pale-skinned elderly man, who had deep wrinkles and a strong jawline with spiky, shoulder-length, pale brown hair, and a chin-length, braided lock hanging in front of his left ear. The elderly man sported a long goatee; he also had a pair of horn-like protrusions extending from either side of his forehead. He had a red Rinnegan-like marking in the centre of his forehead and two Rinnegan eyes. The man wore a white, full-length kimono with a pattern of six black magatamas around a high collar, beneath which, he wore a necklace which was also made up of six black magatamas. On the back of his kimono was a larger, black Rinnegan marking with a pattern of nine magatamas arranged in three rows of three beneath it. This man was none other than Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki, also known as the Sage of Six Paths. The Sage appeared beside Kakashi in a translucent image, the millennia-old sage was sitting cross-legged in mid-air.

"Kakashi…" The sage called out to the ninja.

"Hagoromo-sama…" Kakashi responded respectfully.

The Sage asked carefully, "Have you calibrated and set the seal?"

"Yes, I have!"

The sage continued with the questions, "Destination year?"

"Five years before Tsukuyomi…" Kakashi answered swiftly.

"Month and date…?"

"24th of July…"

"And time…?"

Kakashi answered confidently, "Around nine o'clock in the morning."

"And destination venue?"

"Land of Waves…"

"Do you have everything you need, Kakashi?" The illusionary image of the sage asked for clarification.

"Yes, Hagoromo-sama…I have everything."

The sage then turned his gaze towards the tailed-beasts and began, "Everyone, keep your chakra flow uniform, any variation will lead to the portal being destabilised and if the portal closes ahead of time, Kakashi will be pulled back before he can make the change. Remember, our job is to buy Kakashi as much time as we possibly can."

"YES, FATHER…" All the bijuus simultaneously agreed to the sage.

Meanwhile, Kakashi went through a series of one hundred and forty-four hand seals in a matter of seconds and ended it with Dragon seal and then he separated his hands and slapped them both on the ground. Fuinjutsu seals appeared on the ground where Kakashi's hands came in contact with, and from there it diverged out and the stream of seals that moved quickly through the stone structure and surrounded the ground around the tailed beasts' and formed a complete circle.

The sage reminded Kakashi once again, "Remember, we can only give you a few hours at best!"

"I only need one, Hagoromo-sama."

" **LET'S GO!"** Kurama yelled and all the tailed-beasts followed Kurama's lead and started channelling chakra via the seals that encircled them.

Kakashi watched from the entrance, he viewed just above the stone table, at the centre of the structure; space-time itself began to warp just like his Kamui. He shifted his gaze to the sage's image that was levitating beside him and the wise sage gave him the go-sign with a nod of his head. And with that, he took a running start as he shot towards the portal that was open just above the stone table. Within seconds, he covered the distance and reached the portal and just when he was three feet away, he jumped into the portal and disappeared.

* * *

 _ **Land of Waves (Thirty Years in the Past)-**_

A barely visible swirling vortex in space-time approximately the size of a tree appeared out of nowhere in the sky just a couple of miles outside of the Land of Waves. A figure was thrown out of the vortex as soon the portal became visible, and then, the portal's size reduced to that of a pinhole, but it stayed active. The figure that was thrown out was plummeting towards the ground at a high velocity. A few feets before ground impact, the figure flipped in mid-air and landed gracefully on the surface of the water of what seemed like an intersection between the sea and a river. In the instant of the figure's landing, the force of impact on the water sent a whiplash through the forest on both the banks of the river. The whiplash created a huge wave that climbed on the banks of the river and flooded the forest for a few minutes until the wave began to slowly recede back into the river.

It was Kakashi; he was standing there on top of the water while breathing heavily. The armoured black flak-jacket and the left side of his pants were burnt badly; only the left shoulder side of the flak-jacket remained intact and the left side of his pants remained up to his knees. Kakashi paid no mind to his appearance, the man's eyes simply morphed into Mangekyou and Kakashi disappeared through the swirling space-time technique.

In another part of the country at the very same second, Kakashi reappeared back through his Kamui. He reappeared in what seemed like another bank of another river, and before him, there was a river barely visible through the heavy mist that surrounded the whole area. Since he was pretty close by, he sensed several active chakra signatures to his left, but they were all far above ground level. Kakashi realised that his younger-self along with his genin team was fighting against Zabuza and Haku atop the bridge.

Kakashi immediately took a seal-tag which had a 'kanji for energy' written on it. The seal-tag held one-tail worth of chakra from all the nine tailed-beasts; all mixed together using the pure form of Natural energy as a medium of adhesion.

He folded the seal in half and stuck it to the centre of his forehead, and then he held a tiger-seal and a moment later, he overlapped his middle fingers around his pointer fingers and connected the tips together. Chakra began transferring from the seal into his eyes; however, since he timed it carefully with Naruto's outburst of Kyuubi's chakra that came from inside Haku's Ice structure, the chakra from his seal was masked from both Zabuza and younger-Kakashi. The Mangekyou patterns in his eyes began spinning wildly in an anti-clockwise direction and he muttered, "Mangekyou: Jikan-shin…" And the world stopped completely, everything froze as time stopped flowing.

The Time-God technique allowed him to stop, accelerate and reverse time to his will with his physical body being dimensionally exempt to that 'manipulation', but the technique would cost him a lot of chakra and it also had a time-limit. His technique was an advanced time-manipulation jutsu, it required a paired Sharingan eyes with Eternal Mangekyou maturity to it. He didn't have EMS level maturity to his eyes as it would require a deteriorating vision followed by a transplantation of eyes from a close sibling, but however, his Mangekyou was far more matured than any other Mangekyou Sharingan, also with the Shodaime Hokage's cells and the strong chakra stored in the seal-tag helped him bypass the requirements needed for casting the jutsu.

When he first discovered the technique while fighting against Toneri Ōtsutsuki, he could only do it for about ten seconds, but with years of practice, now he can use it and keep the jutsu active for up to three minutes in a single stretch and still fight at eighty per cent physical efficiency.

As soon as time stopped flowing, Kakashi Kamui-ed himself to Naruto who was frozen in time along with everything else, Naruto was mid-way into stopping the punch that he was going to deliver on Haku just as the Nine-tails chakra was dissipating. The time-traveller took another seal-tag which also had a kanji for energy written on it, however, this one was slightly bigger in size meaning that it had fifty times the chakra stored in it than the one he used on himself. Kakashi folded it in half and placed it on Naruto's left chest, exactly between Naruto's chakra core and the 'eighth gate of death'; the chakra transferred into Naruto's body within an instant and formed a failsafe contingency for an event that Kakashi was sure it would come. Once the chakra from the tag was transferred completely, the writings on the tag disappeared and the tag itself dissolved into thin air. Kakashi then moved towards the bridge's side and jumped on the railing and then he closed his right eye and stared at his blonde student with his left Mangekyou which stopped spinning, and suddenly, the space around Naruto began shimmering violently for a few moments before it went back to normal. Then the time-traveller's left eye lost its colour and became full white, meaning that the eye had lost its vision.

Izanagi was a technique that will alter the reality around the user, but with the wood-release cells and a chakra source close to that of the ten-tails' chakra, he could extend the range of his technique to several feet around him, even project it on someone else entirely.

However, since the Time-God technique required paired Sharingan eyes just like the Susanoo, as soon as Kakashi's left eye lost its vision, the jutsu came undone and time once again began flowing forward normally.

At the exact moment, time began flowing; Kakashi's body slowly disappeared out of existence. The butterfly effect had led to a different timeline than that of future-Kakashi's world, it took effect the moment the time began moving once again free of Kakashi's jutsu. Meanwhile, Kakashi's soul held on for as long as possible willing itself to see the saviour of their world one last time before his erasure.

From the distance, through the mist, he saw Naruto speaking to a downed Haku with confusion etched on the boy's face; he then smiled at the boy as he remembered a conversation between him and the Sage, a conversation which had changed his mind about a few things.

* * *

" _The portal could be pointed to anywhere in the past. We could just target it at Black Zetsu in the past and travel to it; we could end this war long before it even begins." Kakashi argued to the Sage._

 _The Sage of Six Paths replied calmly, "No, the war must happen, it's not your job to bring about peace, its Naruto's, I entrusted the future of this world to Asura and his descendants so it's Naruto who should end the war… The prophecies must be fulfilled. Besides, I don't think that unity between all the nations would last if the war doesn't happen…! True peace isn't achieved Kakashi, it's forged…, forged through love, hardships, suffering and pain. One must feel all of this before one can realise true peace. Besides, will you commit to killing Obito? A person who we know that can be redeemed…? And killing Obito ahead of time is the only way to 'prevent' the war from happening as you suggest."_

 _The Sage paused for a brief second to view Kakashi and the continued softly, "Do you want to end this war…? Then trust in Naruto, he will be the one to end it."_

 _Kakashi seemed unsure, he wanted to trust in Naruto, but there was no guarantee that their plan would instigate a good change in Naruto, a change that could lead to a better set of events than what happened in their timeline, "How can you hope, Hagoromo-sama? Even after all of this…?"_

" _Because I trust in Naruto…! The first time I met him, I told him that he was the reincarnation of Asura, my younger son, my successor, the one I entrusted Ninshu to, the Ninja Creed. What I didn't tell Naruto was that he was the reincarnation of my son in mind only, not in body. It was all because of Madara, he interfered in the cycle of reincarnation when he cheated death using the Izanagi. If Madara had died in the Valley of End and Hashirama out of old age, the cycle wouldn't have been misaligned, but with Madara cheating death, he interrupted the natural cycle, an entire generation of rebirths were skipped, and then with the awakening of his Rinnegan, it had a lasting effect on the next reincarnation. That was why Sasuke gained all the abilities of Indra while Naruto gained none of the abilities of Asura. Madara's deeds created an imbalance and that's what you're going to correct, Kakashi. Naruto has the mind of my son Asura but not his body, he will need it if he's going to put an end to all the wars and bring about lasting peace. Your Izanagi will awaken two dormant genetic sequences in Naruto's genome and that will trigger a huge change in him. In time, it will transform Naruto's bone structure into resembling his father's, and eventually his cells, his body and his senses will mature to that of a Senju's, and his chakra core will deepen and become denser while his chakra reserves itself will grow in sizes similar to that of an actual Uzumaki's, his mother's. Only then will he be the full reincarnation of Asura Ōtsutsuki."_

 _Kakashi interrupted there, "Hagoromo-sama, I know these changes will instigate a change in Naruto's mind, but how do you know it will be for the better."_

 _The Sage smiled at him and replied, "Because he's the saviour, all he needs is a little push."_

* * *

Kakashi smiled as he kept watching Naruto, he realised that he had done whatever that was humanly possible for him and that there was nothing more he could do but trust in his student. Kakashi closed his eyes and smiled serenely as he muttered to himself, "You are the saviour Naruto. Everything is up to you, now…" With that, the consciousness of the time-travelling ninja was forever erased along with the timeline that he came from.

* * *

 _ **Tazuna's House-**_

Land of Waves was a small island country between the Land of Fire and the Land of Noodles. Until very recently, the country was under the control of a criminal business tyrant named Gato. The country and its occupants thrived on three basic industries, shipping, fishing and some marginal farming. Shipping was the major industry, followed shortly by fishing with farming in the last. Gato had taken control over the entire shipping industry with the help of his private army of thugs, soon he used his position to completely isolate the island nation from any form of trade and monopolised the entire country, and for all intents and purposes, he brought it to its knees.

Having the country under his control, he then started the more elaborate schemes that brought him his huge profits, he brought drugs into the country and used the place as the central hub to route his illegal products to his buyers all over the elemental nations. He forced the local woman into prostitution, created organised crime and with his private army of thugs; he enforced the general populace into paying very high taxes under the pretence of protection.

A concerned citizen named Tazuna, a bridge builder to be exact, understood that Gato would eventually suck the place dry and move on while leaving them to die painfully with whatever that is left. To counter all of this, Tazuna resolved to build a bridge that would connect the Land of Waves to the mainland which would provide them with the much-needed trade to shake off Gato's control over the country and to get the same security the mainland got from the neighbouring countries with ninja villages. As such, Tazuna had hired the genin Team 7 with whatever money he had left and lied to the team about the threat level in order to protect himself from Gato and his associates.

And just a few hours ago, Gato the business tyrant was killed by Zabuza Momochi, a rogue ninja of Kirigakure who had turned against the tyrant himself after being under brief employment for Gato, all the while, the rest of Gato's thugs were overpowered and ousted collectively by the villagers who had mustered enough will to fight against injustice.

Now, on the first floor of the bridge builder's house, in the east corner room, a silver-haired cyclopean Jonin was resting on the bed after having suffered a mild case of chakra exhaustion yet again. In the nearby room, a raven-haired Uchiha genin was resting soundly after having suffered the ice-user Haku's signature senbon attack, death-like stasis, which needless to say had heaved a very heavy strain on the boy's body. Downstairs, by the kitchen, a pink-haired genin kunoichi was chatting lightly with the bridge builder's daughter Tsunami-san, having done nothing to help her teammates in the last fight, so she was still fairly energetic. Finally, in the last room, a blonde-haired boy clad in orange with strange whisker marks on his cheeks was tiredly resting from the day's taxing events. Unknown to himself and the other occupants of the house, Naruto Uzumaki was suffering from heavy fever and paralysis.

The interesting thing about this was that the blonde-haired genin named Naruto Uzumaki was the Kyuubi Jinchuriki; he held the Nine-tailed beast that is sealed inside him at bay. And being a jinchuriki, the boy had huge stamina, huge chakra reserves and a higher healing factor than others, the chances of him being tired or having a fever that would cause paralysis wasn't in any case, a common scenario. In fact, the demon's chakra had always healed the boy and always kept him from suffering the adverse effects of acute malnutrition.

However, fate had something interesting in mind for Naruto. The meddling of a certain time-traveller instigated a transformation inside Naruto's body caused by the now-active genes of his parents that were dormant in him before today. The fever quickly sky-rocketed and went well past the safety limit. Deep inside him, his chakra coils began changing, his chakra core became denser, his life-force grew stronger and several genetic skills began implanting itself into the code of his cells, skills that were purely genetic.

Little did the boy know that great changes were happening in his body, every day a small infinitesimal bit of Kyuubi's chakra would seep into Naruto's chakra system causing imbalance to the flow of chakra, every day his chakra reserves would grow just a little bit, which was what made it nearly impossible for him to get a good control his own chakra. This had adverse side effects to his body, due to the chakra imbalance in his system, he got a lot of energy and stamina, which if left unused made him oversensitive at his core. Atop that, the demonic chakra infused into his chakra stream overdeveloped his senses, touch, scent, sight and sound, everything was out of tune to his perception, that the slightest disturbance in the outside world would put him in a depressed mood. Meanwhile, his violent mood swings brought his attention span to near zero making it almost impossible for him to concentrate on a task singularly and making it impossible for him to multi-task.

All of this was now changing; his body had long ago adapted to handle the constant infusion of demonic chakra but now it found a way to work at a higher efficiency level so to balance his chakra system. His chakra core became denser and the chakra system itself stabilised. The stable chakra system, in turn, calmed his mind and slowed the constant mood swings that made him obnoxious.

Anyone inside the room would have heard the sped up heartbeat, a noise so audible that it could be heard from the outside. The physical change that was taking place inside his body was so intense that it had the extremely physically durable jinchuriki paralysed in bed, which was something that went completely unnoticed to the other occupants in the house.

This pain he was feeling and these changes that were happening was about to change the life of one Naruto Uzumaki for the better, he just didn't know it yet.

* * *

 **Hi guys, I've written fanfic one-shots before in other platforms, but this is my first time in fanfiction dot net. And so I approached my cousin who wrote unpopular fanfictions that I liked very much, so I asked to borrow pieces of his work to write my first work here.**

 **And one more thing, I'll say this ahead of time…the way of the story's opening is for the long-term benefit of the protagonist and not the short-term, so don't worry. Naruto won't be an immediately OP badass ninja right from the next day, he will get there eventually but only by years of endless training, and I once again apologise in advance for the exaggeration of this chapter.**

 **Request: Please try to be patient as you read it…**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer- I do not own Naruto or its characters…**

 **This is going to be a partially dark yet fun story with lots of talking and some mind-blowing action sequences. If you are a SasuSaku or a NaruSaku fan, please leave immediately, this story isn't for you. I won't bash Sasuke, Sakura or Kakashi much, but needless to say, the story won't be centred on them in any way. No pairing as of yet. This is a Naruto-centred story developed at a slow pace… Alternate Universe… Alternate Reality…**

* * *

 _ **Fire Country-**_

A blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy dressed in eye-blinding orange was walking alongside a bored pink-haired girl clad in red and a grumpy raven-haired boy clad in dark blue, followed by a very busy tall silver-haired man whose left eye was fully covered, who had his nose buried in a small orange book.

It was genin team 7, with their Jonin-sensei Kakashi, who were all on their way back to Konoha having successfully completed their first A-rank mission. Everyone in the team had a varying range of thoughts going on in their mind. Kakashi was just happy to be free as he was enjoying the silence of his team since he was busy reading his Icha-Icha book. Sakura was bored out of her mind, since her initial attempts at engaging a conversation with her teammate Sasuke had failed miserably and so she had resorted to keeping quiet. Sasuke was his usual detached and sulking self, mostly because the boy couldn't wait to go back home and begin training with his now-awoken Sharingan. Since he could only do that with the help of the Uchiha clan's library filled with valuable scrolls about the Sharingan, so for obvious reasons, he was itching to go back home.

Meanwhile, the blonde-haired boy named Naruto was hungry, he just wanted to go back home and have the best Ichiraku ramen as much as he could eat. For the first time ever, he no longer felt obligated or did he feel the innate need to pester Sakura for dates after his fifth rejection this morning. It's been almost a month since the battle on the bridge against Zabuza Momochi and his apprentice, Haku. At long last, the bridge itself was built to completion and they had successfully finished their mission protecting Tazuna.

They had spent the last four weeks in wave country and he was almost homesick. For the last four weeks, he had to endure Kakashi's all-time indifference to the team, Sasuke's almost permanent half-emo/half-smug look and Sakura's constant fan-girlish giggling over Sasuke; all the while he was completely invisible to her. It was glaringly obvious to him that Kakashi liked Sasuke the most among the three since Kakashi often took Sasuke alone out to train and when asked Kakashi would reply that it was to teach him something called the 'ways of the Sharingan', whatever that was. It also offended him when Sakura constantly and almost unconsciously ignored his attempts to get a date, always in favour of Sasuke; he couldn't for the world understand why the entire world revolved around Sasuke and why he was invisible.

He initially wanted to inquire about these things to Kakashi-sensei, but he didn't want to ask them with Sasuke around, so not to give away his insecurities. He also figured that if Sasuke was going to have secret Sharingan techniques up his sleeve, he didn't see why he couldn't have a few secret techniques up his sleeve too.

As they were slowly walking on the path through the forests, he was broken out of his musing when he heard Sakura sigh in both relief and happiness, he looked forward just in time to see the village walls to come in sight. It was Konoha, he never believed that he would actually come to miss it, as a child he had often wondered what it would be like to run away, but in any case, this last month had given him a better appreciation for the village and he was at long last, happy to be home.

* * *

 _ **Hokage's Tower-**_

"That's an interesting development." The old man clad in Hokage's robes smoking a long pipe spoke with evident surprise in his tone as he heard the one-eyed Jonin's report about his mission in wave country and he continued analytically, "Recently, I heard whispers about shipping magnate Gato's illegal workings being an annoyance to our trade routes. But, I never thought of him to being capable enough to completely disable and monopolise an entire country just to smuggle and traffic drugs. I'll find out why we didn't get the information about Gato considering that the man had a neighbouring island nation under his control."

"Of course, Hokage-sama…" Kakashi spoke respectfully yet laxly standing in his relaxed stature.

The kage nodded his head in acknowledgement and spoke, "Since, the mission was bumped up to an A-rank mission and considering the success despite the clear ineligibility of your genin team. I will grant your team an A-rank mission's pay, equally distributed among the four of you."

"Thank you, Hokage-sama…" Kakashi replied thankfully and bowed slightly, followed by a deep bow of Sasuke and Sakura, while the Hokage's favourite blonde stood high with both hands tied at the back of his head and with a huge smile plastered on his face. The Hokage smiled at the sight, it reminded him of a genin team which contained a fierce red-haired kunoichi at her youth and also of his own genin team especially of a certain silver-haired student who had an appreciation for toads.

The Hokage pushed those thoughts off of his mind and took another puff of smoke through his pipe and ordered, "You're all dismissed."

Kakashi ushered his team out of the Hokage's office and spoke, "All of you can go downstairs, get your pay, go back home and get some rest. We'll meet as usual at the training ground, tomorrow morning at nine."

Kakashi stood there with a deadpanned look because just as he handed the scroll necessary for assigning the mission pay for the team to Sasuke, his team almost bolted away through the corridor, racing past each other without as much as a 'goodbye' or a 'see you tomorrow'. Kakashi shook his head in annoyance at the sight, he knew that his students were homesick but this was ridiculous and with that, he once again knocked on the Hokage's door and walked in when he heard the 'come in'.

The aged Hokage viewed his most decorated jonin curiously and inquired, "What can I do for you again, Kakashi?"

"Permission to speak freely, sir…" The Cyclops requested to the Kage.

The Kage looked up from his paperwork and viewed Kakashi curiously, "Granted..."

"Permission to speak in private, sir…" The jonin once again requested.

This time the aged Hokage simply placed his palm on a spot on the underside of his desk and they both subsequently sensed the chakra activating in the walls around them, meaning that the privacy barrier was erected, "Granted…"

"What do you want to tell me, Kakashi?" The kage asked curiously.

"Hokage-sama, I sensed a huge surge of the fox's chakra out of Naruto's seal back in Wave, almost a month ago. I rushed the fight the moment I sensed the demonic chakra, but by the time I finished, the chakra disappeared leaving no trace. I checked the seal and I couldn't find anything wrong with it, I may be proficient in sealing but I'm no master and sensei's seal is some really advanced work that most seal-masters would have trouble with, I won't be surprised if I missed something. In any case, from what I saw, I believe that the seal is weakening, to me it seemed like Naruto unconsciously accessed some of the beast's chakra without him ever realising it, and I think it would happen again if there is another high-stress situation in the future."

"This is most troubling, Kakashi. I must admit that I expected something like this to happen a long time ago and when it didn't come about, I saw it happening soon enough in the future, but this is unexpected. I may know more about Minato's seal than anyone else in the village, but Fuinjutsu is not my field of studies and I don't think that I'll be able to find if there is indeed a problem with the seal. I think it's time to call ' _him_ ' back to the village."

Silence prevailed in the room for the following few minutes and finally, the Sandaime Hokage spoke once again, "You're dismissed, Kakashi." The Kage's tone made it seem like the aged leader was in deep thought and was distracted.

"Hokage-sama…" Kakashi stood straight and then disappeared in a puff of smoke leaving the Hokage to muse on his own thoughts.

* * *

 _ **Residential District-**_

Iruka Umino was locking the front door of his moderately big apartment and was about to be on his way to the ninja lounge near the academy to spend the day socialising with his colleagues since it was Sunday which was essentially his only day off from teaching. Just as the man locked his door and was about to walk away he heard a very familiar yell, "Iruka-sensei…!"

The chunin instructor who was startled by the loud yell turned around just in time to see a yellow and orange blur racing towards him. The man's eyes adjusted when the blur came to a screeching stop just a foot before him. It was his favourite blonde knucklehead with a huge grin etched on his face.

"Naruto, when did you come back from Wave and how was your first C-rank mission?" Iruka asked curiously with a smile, being happy that his student was finally enjoying the dream of being a ninja.

"Boy, do I have a story to tell ya…"

* * *

 _ **Ichiraku Ramen Stand-**_

"I can't believe Kakashi-san chose to stay and finish the mission rather than return back after the first encounter?" Iruka commented in disbelief, not really wanting to believe the story the blonde knucklehead had just iterated to him.

"Kakashi-sensei was so cool. He fought against Zabuza like he was the wind; I couldn't even see them move."

"Jonins of their calibre usually fight like that, Naruto. Actually, if it wasn't for Kakashi-san's presence, your team could have died against Zabuza Momochi. I mean Zabuza Momochi; if my memory is right, this guy was one of the seven swordsmen of the mist, and they're the most ruthless ninjas Kirigakure has ever produced. Not many jonins let alone ninjas in our village can match Nukenins of Momochi's calibre and come out alive." Iruka spoke worriedly.

"I figured that part all by myself, Iruka-sensei…" He replied not realising his former teacher's sense of worry, "I'm done." Naruto spoke with satisfaction, as he finished gulping down the remaining soup at the bottom of the sixth ramen bowl. And the concerned chunin followed after the blonde blue-eyed boy in surprise as his student had just paid and tipped generously to the ramen stand owner before walking out. Iruka couldn't believe it; his student had treated him to ramen rather than the usual other way around.

As they both walked out and were on their way past the training grounds, Naruto asked, "Iruka-sensei, could you tell me what 'specialise' means?"

"What...?"

"'Specialise', what does it mean?" The blonde knucklehead asked curiously.

"What brought this on, Naruto?" Iruka asked surprised because this was out of character for the blonde. His question was an attempt to understand the context in which the word is used.

"Back in Wave, I heard Kakashi-sensei telling Sakura-chan about how she could specialise in genjutsu. I tried finding the word in the dictionary, but I didn't understand anything about it."

The chunin instructor gladly began to explain, "Specialise means to become an expert in something you choose. In this context, it means a ninja choosing a specific field of studies to gain mastery in…"

"Huh…?" It was the only thing he could say because he didn't understand a single word of what Iruka-sensei just said.

The patient chunin understood that his student was blank and so he continued, "Naruto, It's like this. Most ninjas choose to become good at one thing rather than at everything, for example, that traitor Mizuki chose to become proficient in taijutsu and weapons training while I chose to be all rounding in every basic skill. Let's take a taijutsu user for a moment, the guy would be good at hand-to-hand combat, but not at ninjutsu or genjutsu, it doesn't mean that the guy doesn't know how to use other techniques, but he will be far less adept at it. Do you understand?"

"Genjutsu requires perfect chakra control; ninjas like Sakura who have a smaller chakra reserve have a naturally good chakra control, giving them a good chance at learning genjutsus while you have chakra reserves the size of a big hill, which is why you have a tough time controlling it." The chunin continued after a short pause, while carefully outlining Naruto's obvious problem since his academy days. Since Naruto was very oversensitive which meant that he could be easily offended, the chunin took extra care in wording it in a way so that it wouldn't tick Naruto off.

Naruto understood what Iruka was trying to explain, "I get it. Specialise means becoming a master at either ninjutsu or taijutsu or genjutsu, but not at all of them together, not like the Hokage. And Sakura-chan can be good at genjutsu cause' she has very less chakra to use and so she can be better at it than me and Sasuke-teme."

"Not exactly…, but more or less like that."

The blonde grinned and continued, "Sensei, do you know any chakra controlling things?"

"You mean chakra-control exercises?"

"Yeah, that…"

"I'm sure Kakashi-san would teach them to you soon enough, there's no need for you to hurry." The academy instructor didn't see why his former student had to train on his own; his rational part told him that he needed to impart the importance of patience to the blonde genin.

"Please…" Naruto, however, was determined to train in chakra control because according to his teammates, the chakra control thing was the most basic skill and according to Sakura's and Sasuke's opinion, he sucked at it and he had to prove them both wrong.

"Maybe, I can show you a few things…" The Chunin agreed after a moment, seeing that nothing harmful would come to be by just teaching the boy a few chakra control exercises.

"Yay…"

* * *

 _ **Uchiha Compound-**_

It was late at night; the moon above lit the sky bright. He was roaming the halls of the northern sector of the Uchiha Compound. He was itching to test something out, something he had wanted to find for all these years.

Something that had intrigued Sasuke from the moment he heard his brother speak of it on that fateful night all those years ago, _"In the main hall of Nakano Shrine. Underneath the seventh Tatami mat from the far right, is our clan's secret gathering place. There you'll find a secret document. An explanation for the Uchiha clan's jutsu…It tells of the visual jutsu's true purpose."_

Sasuke clearly remembered the words of the person he hated the most in life, he followed the instruction precisely as it is and as a result, he was standing in front of what seemed like a dusty old stone tablet. Since he couldn't read the contents of the tablet, he activated his Sharingan in order to try and read it, but even then, he couldn't read the text. He surmised that he needs to fully mature his Sharingan to even read a little of the tablet's contents, and as he only possessed two tomoes around the pupils, he knew that his Dojutsu wasn't fully matured, hence whatever that was written on the tablet was out of his reach, for now.

He quickly exited the Northern wing and proceeded towards the right side corridor on the western sector of the clan compound. He remembered being forbidden to play here by one of the clan's elders when he was just a child. It was only later, did he realise that the right side corridor held the entrance to the Uchiha Library, which happened to be something only an Uchiha with an active Sharingan can access. He had waited so long to enter this place and now he was finally here and he couldn't wait any longer.

The moment he walked closer to the Library's door with his Sharingan still active, the huge door opened on its own as the seal on the door recognised his presence as an Uchiha. Unlike the stone tablet, entering the library was available to anyone who had an active Sharingan. As he set foot in the library, all the lamps inside lit itself in a consecutive stream stretching to the full length of the long room. When all the lamps were lit, the light revealed the sheer size of the library filled with scrolls on the shelf after shelf, stretching from the sides to the full length, while different weapons of different sizes hung on the walls on all the sides.

A mad grin appeared on the Uchiha's face as he realised that the years of his hard work had finally paid off, he was now at long last, a real Sharingan user, a real Uchiha, not just in name but in calibre.

* * *

 _ **Next Afternoon (Training Ground Six)-**_

It was just after twelve, the sun was shining brightly over their heads. Sakura was slumped on the ground and to her right; Sasuke was sitting cross-legged, sulking as usual with his arms crossed over his chest. The two individuals were tired, bored and annoyed, tired of waiting for their sensei, bored out of their minds and annoyed because of the constant loud snoring of their third blonde teammate who was sound asleep to their left without a care in the world.

And finally, the one-eyed Jonin decided to pop in, there was a sudden puff of smoke in front of the three children and a silver-haired man appeared with a cheery, "Yo…"

"WHERE IN THE HELL WERE YOU?" Sakura yelled out in complete frustration.

Hearing the loud yell, the blonde Jinchuriki jerked awake from his sleep with a scream, "AHHHH…"

Meanwhile, Kakashi noticed that his blonde student was unusually silent, but he had a good idea why because from where he stood it seemed like the boy barely had the strength to throw a tantrum. Kakashi chose to reply, "You see, I was helping an old lady to carry her groceries…"

"Sensei, just don't, okay…stop, we don't wanna hear any more of your stupid lies." Sakura once again spoke but this time gritting her teeth comically at the Jonin.

"Okay then, let's go do some D-ranks…" Kakashi spoke cheerily completely ignoring Sakura's outburst.

"OH GODDD…" All three genins simultaneously moaned rather exasperatedly at their apparent misfortune.

"Come on, let's go." Kakashi ushered his genins out of their fatigue and had them walk towards the Hokage's tower.

* * *

 _ **That Evening-**_

He was on his way back to his apartment having finished the day's D-rank missions and being rejected by Sakura yet again. As he was sulking back to his apartment, he was in deep thought, for the first time in years, he was actually wondering why he even cared about getting Sakura's attention at all. When he chose to pursue after Sakura in the academy, he was a failure and he thought that maybe if he got Sakura to go on a date with him, then others would begin noticing him due to Sakura's popularity in class. Every time Sakura shot him down without mercy, he tried harder and harder in order to impress her; eventually, in time, he didn't even stop to think why he even wanted a date.

Now, he was a ninja and his way forward to become Hokage was his path, he was suddenly considering his feelings for Sakura to be empty. A moment later he realised that he was contemplating his feelings for Sakura; he immediately brushed it off as his own paranoia. However, he failed to realise that the sapling of destructive thought that was planted in his mind would never stop growing.

As a welcome distraction, he began noticing a square rock following him around, he sighed tiredly and he turned to the rock and said, "Come out guys, you are not fooling anyone! There are no such things as square rocks with two perfect holes." And then suddenly the particularly square rock that was following him around suddenly burst into a lot of smoke and the three children stumbled out in a coughing fit.

"Konohamaru, you added too much smoke powder!" The bespectacled boy named Udon said through his coughing and once they got steady enough they started together and aloud.

"I am Konohamaru the strongest ninja in the academy…"

"I am Moegi the sassiest kunoichi in school…"

"I am Udon, I like math…"

"Together, we are the Konohamaru Corps." The three troublesome children finished their intro together rather loudly.

"Boss, come on play ninja with us…" Konohamaru asked or rather begged out loud, with the three kids simultaneously employing the infamous puppy-dog-eyes technique on him.

"What kind of ninja would play 'ninja'?" Just as he was about to buckle down to the pressure of the children's combined puppy-dog-eyes jutsu, Sakura's voice came out of nowhere, as she commented out emerging from behind the nearby intersection, essentially breaking the tender mood.

"Sakura-chan…!" Naruto exclaimed out loud.

"Boss, is she your…?" Konohamaru asked him noticing the 'chan' behind the girl's name and held out a pinkie finger at him.

He couldn't help but grin stupidly at Konohamaru for assuming that Sakura-chan was his girlfriend. However, his silence was interpreted much differently by the children impatiently standing in front of him.

"I knew it, boss, why would you pick a girl with a huge forehead and a flat chest…?" Konohamaru said out loud in an obvious tone, not realising the threat of what was about to come.

"Konohamaru, RUN…" He warned because he could literally see the black flames oozing around Sakura and a visage of Shinigami appearing behind her.

Sakura was actually on her way home when she met with Naruto and the group of children. She was going home because she was depressed, she was sad because her beloved Sasuke-kun had claimed that she was even more useless than Naruto, when she was badmouthing about the said boy. She couldn't fathom those words uttered by her love interest, how could she be useless than the dead-last dobe of their class and how could her Sasuke-kun be so cruel to her. Since her problems had her preoccupied, it didn't take long for Konohamaru's insult to push Sakura off the edge.

And a moment later Sakura's head grew bigger to comical sizes and with a loud battle cry, "AHHHHHH…" She started chasing after the small boy and the said boy started sprinting like crazy, however, on the next intersection Konohamaru turned left and bumped into a boy.

Konohamaru gulped and looked up at the older boy he had just run into. He was wearing a black cat-like suit with a hood and cat-shaped ears attached to it. He had purple markings on his face. He also had a circle on his black outfit. Half of it was yellow and the other half was red. He carried what looked like a sack on his back, a sack wrapped around with white sash. The girl who was with him was slightly older; she was wearing a desert-like dress attached with fishnet mesh at the very top of her dress, on both her arms, and on both her legs, on the right, it was as low as her ankles and on the left, it was right above her knee. She had a giant fan on her back; she also had her hair in four ponytails.

"THAT HURT YOU LITTLE SHRIMP." The boy with the purple makeup screamed while picking Konohamaru up by the collar.

"Stop, Kankuro... You're making a scene." The older girl said to the guy who was now swinging Konohamaru back and forth in the air like a rag doll.

"Put him down, now…" Naruto angrily demanded to the new boy.

The older boy however completely ignored him, and so a moment later there was a loud yell, "PUT HIM DOWN YOU BIG FAT APE!"

The strange boy, however, had a different idea in his mind, "All I was going to do was play with the kid, but I guess you want him to die." Kankuro spoke while grinning cruelly.

Moegi pulled on Naruto's sleeve asking, "Boss, do something!"

"I'll take care of this Moegi." With that, Naruto went charging at the boy named Kankuro, but just three steps into the sprint, Kankuro moved a single finger and Naruto tripped and fell face-first on the ground.

"First..." Kankuro began looking straight at Naruto, "I'll deal with this little squirt and then I'll waste you."

Kankuro drew his fist back, ready to deck Konohamaru in the face, but before he could land his blow, something fast and hard struck him in his wrist. Shocked by the sudden attack, Kankuro released Konohamaru and the small boy fell on his ass, while the weird ninja was left holding his throbbing wrist. Something rolled to the ground at his feet and when Kankuro looked down, he found himself staring at a pebble.

"Huh…?" Kankuro growled and spun around to find the person who had thrown it.

Sasuke sat tall against the back of a tree, overlooking the group while he repeatedly kept tossing another rock up and down in his hand, "You're a long way from home and you're way out of your league." Sasuke stated in his usual, cool tone.

"SASUKE…!" A noise exclaimed a much too enthusiastic Sakura, all the while blushing bright red.

Kankuro's eyes narrowed, "Oh great...another wimp to tick me off..."

Sasuke frowned, his fist closing tight over the rock he held, crushing it in between his palm while dropping only the remaining dust. "Get lost..." Sasuke warned still sitting calmly in the tree.

The genin's threat didn't reach Kankuro's ears, the boy turned to face Sasuke up in the tree and spoke threateningly, "Hey punk, why don't you get down here." Sasuke remained unmoving; his dark eyes further narrowing at the older boy.

"You're the kind of pesky little snot I hate the most." Kankuro declared as his hand reached up for the bandages strapped on the sack his back, "All attitude…, and nothing to back it up…"

His travelling companion gasped; her teal eyes widening as she realised the unwinding sash flying in the air, "What?" She asked in obvious surprise, "Are you gonna use the Crow for this…?" There was a loud thump when Kankuro's bundle of bandages that he had been carrying on his back dropped to the floor before him as the boy eyed Sasuke menacingly.

"Kankuro..." And out of nowhere there came a new voice, but this one was far more commanding, "…back off!"

Sasuke gasped quietly; his head turning to the side to see the new character standing upside down on the branch beside him. He had short auburn hair and light teal eyes; he had a 'kanji for love' carved on the left side of his forehead and on his back he carried a large gourd.

As soon as the voice came, Kankuro fell on his back with a nervous smile tugging at his mouth, "Gaara..."

"You're an embarrassment to our village." This new character named Gaara continued on with his arms crossed over his chest, "Have you forgotten the reason why we came all the way here?" The redhead asked threateningly.

Kankuro shifted nervously on his feet. "I know! I...I…I mean they challenged us. They started the whole thing really." Kankuro answered being frightened to his core, "...see here's what happened…"

"Shut up!" Gaara ordered; his tone was hollow with no emotions yet deadly. Kankuro stood up and took a step back as his face suddenly lit with fear, "...or I'll kill you."

"Uh...right." Kankuro spoke out loud, putting both hands up in front of him in a surrendering gesture, "I was totally out of line."

Turning slightly, Gaara faced Sasuke, "I'm sorry...for any trouble he may have caused." With that, Gaara's form vanished in a cloud of sand that fell to the ground below before the redhead reappeared next to his companions.

"Let's go." Gaara ordered once again, "We didn't come here to play games..." With that, the trio of strangers turned and began walking away with Gaara leading them.

"Hold on..." Sasuke called after them; bringing them to a stop.

"What?" The blonde-haired girl named Temari asked in place for the group.

"I can tell by your headbands that you come from the village hidden in the Sand. Of course, the Land of Fire and the Land of Wind are allies, but no shinobi can enter another's village without permission." Sasuke continued to probe the strangers.

Sakura took courage in Sasuke's presence and asked, "So, state your purpose here and it better be good."

The trio of sand village ninjas turned around at that to face them and Temari began, "Really?"

The blonde girl continued, "Have you all been living under a rock or what? You don't know what's going on, do you?"

She returned towards them as she reached down and pulled out a certification card for travel and spoke, "We have permission. And we're here for the Chunin Exams, get the picture?"

"The Chunin Exams…?" Naruto being obviously clueless asked confusedly, "...what's that? I've never heard of it before."

Temari laughed out loud, "Oh Kami, you are totally clueless."

"Hey, boss..." Konohamaru whispered to him, "Those are the exams every genin's got to take in order to become a chunin."

"Oh!" Naruto exclaimed out loud, "Well, why didn't you say so? I am SO there…" The trio of Sand village genin scoffed out loud at Naruto's comment before they once again turned and started back down the street.

"Hey…" Sasuke stopped the trio yet again and asked, "You identify yourself…"

The blonde girl turned to face Sasuke and asked sweetly, "Who…? Me…?"

"No..., not you, the one next to you, the one with the gourd on his back…"

Gaara came to an instant halt, "My name is Subaku no Gaara. I'm curious about you too." The redhead answered as he turned his head back and viewed over his shoulder with one eye, "Who are you?"

"I am Sasuke Uchiha."

Seeing the two stare each other down, Naruto swiftly stepped forward, grinning like an idiot, "Hi there!" He declared, "I bet you're dying to know my name, right?"

"I couldn't care less..." Gaara answered in a completely uninterested tone. With that being said, Gaara and his group leapt off the ground and disappeared away from sight in an instant.

Now that the strangers were gone, Sasuke rudely pushed past him commenting, "Back off, dobe…" With that, the Uchiha left almost immediately and Sakura followed behind the Uchiha like a lost puppy.

Naruto turned dejectedly towards his little fan club. "Hey, Konohamaru..." Naruto asked quietly, "Do I seem uncool or something?"

"Well...compared to Sasuke, yeah, you're pretty lame!" The boy answered truthfully.

Naruto instantly gave a deadpanned look and began sulking comically. He couldn't understand what made him invisible to others and Sasuke the centre of the world. He didn't know what made Sasuke so special and him an idiot, he didn't ask for this life, he didn't ask to be born. He didn't know why this was happening, but in any case, he wasn't going to sit around and do nothing; he had an obligation to do something and he determined that he will do something.

* * *

 _ **Hokage's Tower (Next Afternoon)-**_

The Hokage was sitting at his desk in the conference room and before him, stood all the Jonin-sensei of all the genin teams in the village along with many Chunins and Tokubetsu Jonins. The aged Kage took another huff of smoke from his pipe and began, "Let's start with Kakashi."

The cyclopean ninja held a half-tiger hand seal with his right hand up to his lips and replied respectfully, "From the 7th squad that I lead Uchiha Sasuke, Uzumaki Naruto and Haruno Sakura. I recommend those three to the Chunin selection exam under my name, Hatake Kakashi."

As soon as Kakashi finished, a tall bearded man with brown eyes and olive skin began in continuation, he too held a half-tiger seal with right hand up to his lips and continued, "From the 10th squad that I lead Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru and Akimichi Choji. I recommend those three to the Chunin selection exam under my name, Sarutobi Asuma."

Following Asuma, a red-eyed, fair-skinned, slender built woman with long black untamed hair reaching up to her shoulder began out loud with her half-tiger seal up to her lips, "From the 8th squad that I lead Hyuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba and Aburame Shino. I recommend those three to the Chunin selection exam under my name, Yuuhi Kurenai."

As soon as they finished, almost everyone standing behind the three Jonins began murmuring amongst themselves. And then, the aged Hokage gave the three Jonins a barely visible nod of agreement.

Suddenly Iruka stepped forward interrupting them, "Please wait!"

"Excuse me for interfering, but the nine who had their names called were students of mine at the academy. Every one of them is talented, but it's too early! Are you trying to ruin them?" Iruka asked outraged by what he heard, his eyes pointing at Kakashi specifically, beginning in a respectful tone but ending it in a vindictive manner.

"They always complain during important missions. Putting them in a dangerous situation might be interesting. Ruining them is also interesting." The Cyclopean ninja replied almost nonchalantly.

"What did you say…?" Iruka asked back in shock.

"That was a joke..." Kakashi replied almost impassively.

The Jonin Kunoichi named Kurenai jumped in aiming at her fellow Jonin, "Kakashi, stop…"

However, the one-eyed Jonin decisively ignored Kurenai and spoke in a higher tenor than before but with his gaze firmly rooted on Iruka, "Don't interfere! They are no longer your students. They are my subordinates now."

The concerned Chunin was outraged by the Jonin's reasoning and began, "But the Chunin exam is also known as the…"

But Iruka never finished as he was interrupted by the Hokage, "Iruka... I understand your argument."

"Hokage-sama…"

"So, we will put the rookie Genins through a special preliminary exam." And the aged Kage came with an instant solution to the problem.

" _A preliminary exam…?"_ Iruka thought to himself in confusion.

* * *

 _ **Next Day-**_

It was around twelve o'clock, Sasuke was sitting cross-legged on the ground, and his eyes were clicking irritably. He was on the edge of snapping because Sakura who was sitting next to him was still trying to strike up a conversation with him. He couldn't understand what was wrong with his pink-haired teammate, usually, if he ignored her for long enough she would stop bothering him but today she was overly persistent, she kept jabbering on about her hobbies for the last hour. And to his misfortune, his loud-mouthed but kind of lovable blonde teammate wasn't in any way interested in asking Sakura for dates, which usually gave him an opening to escape Sakura's annoying attention and provided him with the much-needed respite.

Meanwhile, Naruto was sitting separately from the two wannabe couples/teammates and he was busy playing an interesting game of cards with three of his shadow clones. He knew that Kakashi-sensei would show up late as usual and so he brought a deck of cards to kill the time.

All of a sudden the clone sitting opposite to him placed the cards on the ground and called, "Full house… Aces full of nines…"

"Oh, come on." He cursed out loud while the rest of his clones sighed audibly.

As Naruto's clone was about to begin a victory dance, the jinchuriki dispelled them all out of spite. As this was happening, Kakashi who was watching his students from the treeline viewed them with obvious disappointment. He knew how lonely it was for Naruto, the least his students could do was converse with their teammate, but seeing Naruto playing a card game along with his clones while his other two students who are not ten feet away from Naruto, not joining the game but going all the way up to completely ignoring the blonde was disappointing.

Until that moment, he was thinking if he made a mistake by enlisting them for the Chunin Exam but now he was sure that showing his students the true ninja life for what it is and how real it can become, was the best decision that he could make at this point. He firmed to himself in his thoughts that this would undoubtedly teach his team the necessity of teamwork and bring the team together.

With that, the Cyclopean Jonin shunshined into the training ground and appeared before his students in a puff of smoke, "Yo…"

"Sensei, if you show up late one more time, I will…ARGH…" Sakura yelled at the Jonin and for the lack of better words to express her anger, she stopped abruptly.

Naruto yelled along with his crush in agreement to her threat, "YEAH…"

"Shut up, dobe." Sasuke claimed out loud, annoyed by the blonde's outburst of agreement to their useless teammate's empty threat.

"Okay, all kidding aside, I have an important announcement to make. These are the entry forms for the Chunin selection exam." Kakashi handed out one sheet of application for each of them separately and continued, "I've entered you three in. All you have to do is show up at the academy, coming Friday, afternoon three o'clock, go to room number 301 and you are considered in…"

"And you have the rest of the week off, I've got to run, ja ne." And the moment the cyclopean Jonin finished, he shunshined off once again leaving a puff of smoke behind.

Naruto turned to his right only to see that his teammates were missing, he looked around and in the distance, and he saw Sasuke speeding away from the training ground with a very determined Sakura in tow. And since he didn't feel like asking Sakura out on a date, he chose not to go after them instead he dejectedly jumped into the treeline and began tree-hopping towards the academy because he had something that needed to be cleared up, and he knew the perfect person to inquire about it.

* * *

 **Okay, guys, the next chapter is over, stay tuned for more chapters…**

 **See ya…**


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer- I do not own Naruto or its characters…**

 **This is going to be a partially dark yet fun story with lots of talking and some mind-blowing action sequences. If you are a SasuSaku or a NaruSaku fan, please leave immediately, this story isn't for you. I won't bash Sasuke, Sakura or Kakashi much, but needless to say, the story won't be centred on them in any way. No pairing as of yet. The Naruto-centred story developed at a slow pace… Alternate Universe… Alternate Reality…**

* * *

 _ **Academy (Teacher's lounge)-**_

Naruto walked into the lounge and found Iruka-sensei sitting and having tea while grading answer sheets of the students. The chunin immediately noticed the blonde-haired boy who was walking towards him and smiled at the genin whom he had grown to like in the recent years.

"Hey, Naruto…"

"Iruka-sensei…" The blonde jinchuriki greeted the chunin cheerily.

"Come, sit, have some tea." Iruka poured some tea from the pot into a handle-less cup.

The blonde boy slowly walked over and sat facing the chunin and kept staring into the cup without uttering a single word. The observant chunin slowly began, "Okay…, Naruto, what's bothering you?"

"Kakashi-sensei enrolled us into the chunin exam." He instinctively replied in a low voice.

"Yeah, I know…"

"You know?"

"I know…" The chunin answered honestly.

Iruka Umino was one of those people Naruto trusted, someone he truly trusted with his life. As such, Iruka was one of those rare people that he actually spoke his mind to, speaking with his true feelings at heart rather than putting on his usual cheerful façade.

He really hated doubting himself or his own decisions but he had to ask this because something about him being in the chunin exam felt wrong, he couldn't explain it, it was more of a feeling. "Do you think I'm ready to be a chunin, sensei?" Naruto asked reluctantly.

"Wow…, you've grown, Naruto. If this had happened two months ago, I swear, I would have asked 'who you are' and 'what you have done with Naruto'. But seeing as you're sitting here asking yourself if you're ready for this, means that you're growing very quickly. I'm proud of you, Naruto." Iruka commented warmly yet wholeheartedly.

Naruto beamed happily at the older man's compliment, someone he considered to be a brother figure and replied, "Thanks, Iruka-sensei. I've been thinking a lot ever since that fight on the bridge against Zabuza and Haku, back at Wave."

"It's a good sign. It shows that you're maturing as a ninja, you are taking your career seriously." Iruka once again commented carefully, and after a short pause, the chunin continued, "Now onto the matter at hand, to answer your question honestly, I'd say 'no', you're not even remotely ready to be a chunin."

"How much do I have to train before I'm…, you know, ready?" He asked curiously because he felt like he wanted to know so that he can train.

The chunin, however, had a few things to clarify before explaining the details about chunin requirement, "Before we go into that, I wanna ask you something. What brought this on?"

Naruto once again began staring into the cup of tea before him and became overly reluctant to share, but after almost a minute later, he slowly started opening up, "Yesterday, I met three ninjas from the Sand village. Me, Konohamaru, Udon and Moegi were fooling around in the residential district, then Sakura-chan came by, she and Kono had an argument, she started chasing him around and he was running, but he bumped into this guy who was dressed like a cat with purple makeup on his face. This guy picked Kono up and was about to punch him for bumping into him, I tried to stop him, but before I can even run up to him, he moved his finger and I tripped, I mean all he did was move a finger and I just fell down. Then Sasuke came along and he kind of forced the guy to put Kono down and when Sakura-chan asked, they told us about the Chunin exam. When Kono told me what the chunin exam was, I kind of told them that I'm totally ready to be a chunin and they scoffed at me. For some reason, I kept thinking about it for the whole night, you know."

The Chunin thought for a moment and commented, "It makes sense, you felt weak, like you couldn't do anything, like you had no control." Iruka paused seeing the blonde boy nodding at his remark and then he continued, "I get it… It's frustrating you…" Iruka surmised accurately.

"Now that I have the full story, let's go back to answering that question of yours. I don't know exactly how much you've improved from the days in the academy. But I do know that you've begun to think for yourself, which is a good thing but if I'm being honest about physical parameters of the chunin rank, I'll say you'll have to improve by ten folds in the _very least_." Iruka paused for a brief moment and then continued, "You have to be ten times faster, ten times stronger, ten times sharper than and ten times as skilled as what you were when you graduated, _and that too is in the 'least' to be eligible_ for the chunin rank."

"Now onto the mental requirement, a chunin must think before he acts, he must be capable of analysing a situation surgically and have at least a dozen different ways, to proceed forward and to retreat back, at every step of the game."

"If you think you have these things, you have nothing to worry about." Iruka finished carefully.

"Do you think you have these qualities, Naruto?" Iruka asked seriously.

"Absolutely, yeah…!" Naruto stood and claimed with a wide grin on his face.

Iruka sweat dropped silently sporting a comical frustrated look on his face, "NARUTO…"

The lovable blonde boy began laughing out loud and the chunin sighed at the boy's mood swings and began snickering lightly along with his former student. Iruka, however, wasn't finished, he softly continued chiding the stubborn boy, "Naruto, I'm not joking, this is serious, if you're gonna participate, you have to be prepared at the very least. Chunin Selection Exam isn't something that should be taken lightly. People die in this exam; it has a high mortality rate."

With that, Iruka searched inside his bag that was sitting on the ground near the foot of his bench and took a small brown scroll and placed it on the table in front of Naruto, who had his full attention fixed on the scroll. Iruka continued, "Yesterday when I heard Kakashi-san nominating your team into the Chunin Exam, I prepared this, I would have given you this today evening anyway even if you hadn't shown up now. It has notes about all chakra control exercises from genin to chunin level, five basic exercises that every genin and chunin must learn. Certain chakra control exercises can only be learnt if you have big enough chakra reserves, but you don't have to worry about that. I wrote everything by hand in simple terms so that you can understand it…, and there is also a book on different types of landscapes and ways to track something or navigating your way through it."

Iruka wanted Naruto to survive because he cared for the boy; he didn't mind favouring Naruto too much because in his mind Naruto deserved his help for all the sabotage he faced in his early academy and pre-school years. In fact, if the Hokage hadn't taken the time to teach the boy how to read and write at age six, he would have still been illiterate, besides it wasn't like he was teaching a volatile jutsu to him, just some things that he hoped that will help him get through the exam safely.

"You mean study? NO WAY…" He yelled as he stood up from his seat, he couldn't for the world fathom why he had to study; he crossed his arms and gave a stubborn look.

Iruka iterated something he once told Naruto a long time ago, "No shortcuts, Naruto. Remember…? There are no shortcuts to becoming Hokage. Do you want to become a chunin or not?" Meanwhile, the blonde-haired nuisance groaned out loud as he nodded and began visibly sulking with his eyes closed.

Iruka understood that he will have to butter this up, if he was going to make Naruto study and so he started slowly, "All you have to do is to keep reading the materials again and again until it makes sense to you. If you don't wanna do it, then make your shadow clones do it and then dispel them to learn whatever they learnt. If you do this and learn _all of this_ before the Chunin Exam, then I'll treat you to unlimited ramen at Ichiraku's."

"UNLIMITED RAMEN…? You've got a deal." He agreed with the chunin almost instantly and the crafty chunin smiled as his motivating technique worked, but it wasn't until a moment later did Naruto realise what he just heard, "Wait a minute, I can use shadow clones to study?"

"Of course, you can… Didn't Kakashi-san tell you about the memory feedback effect of the shadow clone technique?" Iruka asked curiously.

"Nooo…!" Naruto casually dragged on his one syllable answer.

"Well to be short, say you're sending a clone to do a mission and when the clone finishes the mission, it dispels. As it dispels, you get all the things it learned, its memories, its experience and any skill it may have picked up, skills that are chakra-based or memory-based but nothing that is physically learnt."

He asked being completely clueless about what it meant, "I don't get it?"

"Hmmm…, I'll put it like this. Say, you're using five clones to learn all those chakra control exercises in that scroll, and then you're making those clones practise everything they've learnt, you're gaining the experience and skill of five people in one day. Now, if you do it for the next six days, then you'll be fairly proficient with chakra control before the Chunin exam and you'll have the experience of a month's worth of chakra control training."

"WHAAA…?" Naruto comically screamed like his life was a total waste up to now, "Does this mean that I could have used the shadow clones to train for like, the last two and a half months?"

"Yeah…" Iruka once again replied honestly.

The honest answer from the chunin was followed by another comical yell that erupted from the jinchuriki that could be heard even outside the academy, "NOOOO…!"

"Don't beat yourself up, Naruto. I didn't know of this feature of the Shadow Clone jutsu until I asked the Hokage-sama to take a peek at the Forbidden scroll of seals just to make sure that you haven't learned a dangerous jutsu. Thankfully, Hokage-sama was considerate enough that he allowed me to view it in his presence that night." The caring chunin revealed how he came to know about the memory-feedback feature of the shadow clone technique.

Naruto, however, had another question, "If you knew, why didn't you tell me?"

Iruka took a moment to reply, "There were warnings about the memory-feedback effect, Naruto. Suppose, too many clones are used recklessly for training, chances are that it would overload the brain of the user. I just wanted to be sure that it was safe, I wanted to know if you could handle that, and since nothing has happened in the last two and a half months, I think it's safe to say that you can handle the strain."

"If you say so, sensei…" Naruto shrugged off the disappointment away and he spoke as things slowly came into perspective, "So…if I use the shadow clones…, I'll be able to master these exercises within the week…, hmmm…then I will master them all, BELIEVE IT!"

Iruka replied carefully, "Okay, now I know that you will train, but be careful and promise me that you won't overdo it."

"I PROMISE…" The jinchuriki promised out loud because he was so happy that he had a fool-proof way to train, he was feeling relieved because until an hour ago, he had no idea of how to train for the exam.

And there was silence, he took the cup of tea and gulped it down in go as it had become cold. Both sat in silence for the next minute, Iruka was genuinely surprised by how much Naruto had grown; he didn't notice this growth before for the reason that he only saw the cheery side of the boy up to now.

Once he finished the tea, he was about to get up and leave, only then did he remember something he forgot to ask, "Iruka-sensei, one last thing… I have the rest of the week off. I'm kind of low on cash, got any ideas on which team that I can join to do missions? I don't think Sasuke-teme or Sakura-chan will help me with that since they have family money." Sasuke had money that belonged to the entire Uchiha clan in a trust fund, it was given to the Uchiha upon academy graduation meanwhile Sakura had her family to support her, but he, on the other hand, had to do missions and earn money to survive because he had no one to support him and he no longer got the weekly allowance from the Hokage after he graduated.

"You just got paid for an A-rank mission, what happened to all that money?" Iruka asked in shock as he knew that Naruto wasn't a big spender, he knew that Naruto only ever spent money on himself otherwise the boy was a cheapskate.

"No, I'm saving that money for something else."

Iruka knew better than to inquire about Naruto's savings and so he asked, "Did you ask your team to help you with missions…?" Iruka asked and he got a blank look in return, "You could ask them, it's not a bad thing you know, I mean, it won't hurt you to try?"

"Nah, I'm not gonna ask them…"

"If you feel that strongly about it, you can do the D-ranks alone, instead of the usual 330 to 340 ryos that you get for a mission; you'll get the standard 1000 ryos for a mission, since you're doing it alone, all you have to do is get permission from the Hokage and…" Iruka never finished.

The chunin heard a loud, "SEE YA, SENSEI!" As the blonde boy he cared about jumped out of the window and disappeared. Iruka looked at the table and found the scroll he had given Naruto was missing, so he just shook his head in amusement and went back to grading tests.

* * *

 _ **Academy-**_

For the last week, he had trained like crazy with the shadow clones to help. His shadow clones practised tree-walking, water-walking and kunai-balancing to a point where it came naturally to him, at the same time, waterfall-climbing and kunai-balancing while climbing a waterfall was a bit too difficult since he was still had no luck doing it. He had used over a hundred clones on a daily basis, over eighty clones separated over the five exercises and one clone for reading the book Iruka sensei gave him, while the other nine worked on practising the tracking and navigating methods they found in the book. The last ten clones did numerous D-rank missions, each of the clones were 'henged' as random genins to do menial labour for the villagers, he had to henge them because for obvious reasons, public opinion about him wasn't that great. All the while he trained physically, trying to improve his stamina and strength. At long last, his money problems were solved, every day he did ten D-rank missions which made him enough money to cover his expenses and still have money left to spend on Ichiraku ramen, he did more D-ranks in a week than what they did in two and a half months.

Naruto was just around the corner of the Academy, it was almost half past two, and he had to be in the chunin exam room by three o'clock, so he sped up. As he quickly jumped across the rooftops and he finally reached the Academy entrance. He jumped down in front of the entrance only to see Sasuke already waiting for him and Sakura.

His eyes locked with Sasuke's and they simultaneously looked away, "Dobe…" Sasuke simply insulted him.

"Teme…" He countered back.

Just then Sakura walked towards them, her eyes lit up as she saw Sasuke; needless to say she completely ignored him and walked past him heading towards Sasuke.

"You came…!" Sasuke exclaimed with his eyes locked on Sakura.

"Sasuke-kun…" Within moments Sakura had hearts in her eyes.

With that, they both walked into the academy and up the stairs. As they were heading up, there was a commotion on the second floor. The Uchiha deviated to see what the commotion was about, meanwhile Sakura followed behind her crush. Just as they got in range of the crowd, they heard the voice of the two ninjas who were apparently blocking the way to a room.

"The chunin exam is extremely difficult." One of them spoke.

"We have seen those who gave up on becoming a ninja or becoming seriously injured taking this exam." The other one of the bully continued.

Sasuke being who he was decided to butt in, "That's a sound argument. But I will pass. And undo this genjutsu field you've created. I want to go to the 3rd floor. Sakura, how about you? You should've noticed it first."

Sakura taking comfort in Sasuke's recognition, "Of course, I've noticed it already, because this is the 2nd floor."

"You're pretty good, but just being able to detect genjutsu isn't enough." One of the ninjas who was blocking the door dropped the genjutsu and moved in to kick Sasuke, and his teammate started to respond in kind.

But then something unexpected happened, a boy clad in a green jumpsuit and orange leg warmers with a bowl-cut hairstyle and the bushiest eyebrows he had ever seen moved in and stopped both the kicks within a second's time. Sasuke meanwhile kept thinking to himself, _"He blocked my attack, what kind of chakra was in his arm?"_

With that, the two ninjas who were blocking the door disappeared away in a puff of smoke and the boy in green jumpsuit's teammates walked over, "Lee, you broke the promise. You were the one who wanted to blend in and not draw attention to ourselves. What changed?"

The boy named Lee, however, walked over to Sakura and proclaimed, "My name is Rock Lee. You are Sakura-san, right? Let's go out together. I'll protect you until I die!"

Sakura meanwhile gave Lee a dead-panned look and replied, "No way…"

Lee, however, looked like a lightning had struck him, "What…?" With that, Lee leaned on the wall with one arm to support him and began sulking like crazy.

For some strange reason, Naruto felt nothing when Lee asked Sakura out, he didn't know why but for some reason he kept thinking about something that caught his eyes about the appearance of the green spandex-clad boy, _"That's the biggest and bushiest eyebrows I've ever seen."_

"Okay, that's enough, let's get outta here." Sasuke being bored already brushed past everyone and walked away with his usual emo look, while he and Sakura followed.

And within minutes, they reached the third floor and entered the corridor that led them towards room 301. However, to their surprise, Kakashi-sensei was waiting for them while blocking the way to the room. The cyclopean ninja began, "I'm glad you came, Sakura, for your sake and the others. Now, you can all formally register for the chunin exam."

"Why Kakashi-sensei…?" Sakura asked curiously.

"You see only groups of three can register for the chunin exam, that's the way it's always been!" Kakashi answered carefully.

"But sensei, you said the decision to take the exam was individual?" Sakura asked confused by what she was hearing.

"Yes, I did…"

"Was that a lie?"

"Sort of… It is an individual decision but it affects all of you. I didn't tell you because I didn't want others pressuring you. On the other hand, I didn't want you feeling obliged to attend because of any feelings you might have for Sasuke. I wanted you to come to this decision of your own free will." The jonin explained his reasons.

"So, if I didn't come and others had arrived…" Sakura never finished as she was interrupted.

"It would've been the end of the line. If you hadn't come along, I wouldn't have gotten the others in…, but it's a moot point now. You're all here and for the right reasons, Sakura, Naruto and Sasuke. I'm proud of you all, couldn't have asked for a better team. Good luck…" With that, the cyclopean ninja stood aside allowing them to enter.

* * *

 _ **Room 301-**_

As soon as they stepped into the room various levels of killing intent hit them from almost all directions. There were easily more than hundreds of ninjas wearing various different headbands packed into the long room, and almost everyone was staring at them.

"Sasuke-kun…" They all heard someone yelling Sasuke's name, they turned around just in time to see Ino jumping on Sasuke's back, clinging to him like he was her lifeline.

"You've no idea how much I was hoping you would show up here, I missed those broody good looks of yours…" Ino spoke sweetly while batting her eyelashes beautifully.

"INO-PIG BACK OFF NOW, HE'S MINE!" Sakura yelled at Ino.

Naruto somehow didn't feel like watching a catfight, so he slowly slipped away towards the remaining members of the rookie nine. As soon as he walked closer to Shikamaru and Choji, he heard it, "Man, what a drag?"

"Hey, Naruto…" Choji greeted him happily all the while munching on the bag of chips.

"Hey Choji, Shikamaru…" He greeted them back as they were the only friends he had in the academy. As he was about to strike up a conversation, he heard someone once again yelling from behind him, he turned back to see Kiba and Sasuke going at it. He noticed Team 8 standing behind Kiba ready to join them all.

"You take that back, now!" Kiba yelled at Sasuke.

"Or what…?" Sasuke countered back defiantly with a confident smirk.

Just as he was about to tune out Sasuke and Kiba, out of nowhere, a voice came out of nowhere as someone from the crowd approached them, "You guys, might wanna keep it down a little. I mean, no offence, but you're the nine rookies right, fresh out of the academy? I wouldn't go making a spectacle if I were you; this isn't a class field trip."

Hearing this stranger speak, Ino had enough and so she spoke irritably, "Who asked you? Who are you anyway?"

"I'm Kabuto Yakushi, but really take a look around you; you've made quite an impression." The stranger introduced himself and warned them. The crowd looked around and saw almost everyone in the room was giving them menacing looks.

"Look at those guys…" Kabuto showed them a group of masked ninjas standing several feet away from them, "Those guys are from the rain village, they're very touchy…, this exam makes everyone tense, and you don't want to rub them the wrong way." Kabuto finished ominously.

"I'm sorry, I mean, how would you know how things worked? You're just rookies. You remind me of myself a while back." Kabuto proceeded to apologise to the rookies.

Sakura seeing an opportunity decided to use it, "It was Kabuto, right? Is this your second time?"

"Actually, this is my seventh time." Kabuto agreed with a nervous laugh.

"Seventh time…? Oh man, so these exams are tough, what a drag?" Shikamaru moaned out in frustration.

"Don't give up hope just yet." And with that comment, Kabuto took something called 'chakra info cards', and he tuned out from there, because it was capital 'B' boring. He kept hearing them speak if only barely as he saw Sasuke inquiring about one of the Sand guys and Bushy-Brows. And suddenly, three guys from the sound village attacked the Kabuto guy, even if the guy managed to dodge the taijutsu attack of the sound ninjas, he fell down on the ground and succumbed to some kind of ninjutsu or genjutsu.

And before the fight could escalate any further, there was a big smoke far behind them, in the other side entrance of the classroom and before the smoke could even clear, they heard, "Alright you baby-face degenerates pipe down and listen up." The smoke settled and there were a group of veteran ninjas standing there, "It's time to begin. I'm Ibiki Morino, your proctor and from this moment onwards, your worst enemy."

"Now then, we will start the first test of the chunin exam! Turn in your applications, take one of these number-cards in exchange, and sit in the seat matching that number! The written test will be shortly underway." The proctor began loudly.

" _No, no, no, no, not a written test. This is already a disaster."_ Naruto thought to himself hopelessly as he got the number 53 and took his seat.

He was freaking out, written tests weren't his strong point, and he was gonna fail and that much was sure, but before he could give up all hope he heard, "N-N-Naruto-kun…"

He turned to his right only to see the weird Hyuga girl next to him, her name was, Hinata. She was totally weird, always fainting around him and running away if he even saw her in the street, "Hey Hinata, where'd you come from, I didn't see you?"

"I-I…, I just wanted to say g-good luck in everything." The weird girl stuttered and he grinned as he got some semblance of a peace of mind, "Thanks…good luck to you too, Hinata."

And then the test began, "Everyone, eyes front. There are a few rules you need to be aware of, and I won't answer any questions so you better pay attention the first time around." The proctor looked scary, he almost always spoke threateningly, and needless to say, that definitely freaked him out.

The scary proctor began explaining the test, "Rule number one. The written part of the exam is conducted on a point reduction system, contrary to what some of you may be used to, you all begin the test with the perfect score of ten points. One point will be deducted for each answer you get wrong, so if you miss three, your final score will be seven."

" _And if I miss ten, my final score will be zero."_ He mused hopelessly.

The proctor paused and continued, "Rule number two. Teams will pass or fail based on the total scores of all three members."

" _WHAAAT…"_ He couldn't believe it, he was gonna bring the team down with him, he was already feeling a little light-headed.

The proctor continued, "Rule number three. The sentinels you see positioned around the room are there to watch you carefully for any signs of cheating, and for every incident they spot, they will subtract two points from the culprit's score. Be warned their eyes are extremely sharp and if they catch you five times you'll be dismissed before the tests are even scored."

" _More good news…"_ He was comically crying as all hope of passing the test went out of the window.

"Anyone foolish enough to be caught cheating by the sentinels doesn't deserve to be here. If you wanna be considered shinobi then show us what exceptional shinobi you can be. One more thing, if any candidate should get a zero and fail the test then the entire team fails." The proctor finished out loud.

Naruto was sweating bullets because he could literally feel two sets of eyes piercing the back of the skull, he was sure that they belonged to Sasuke and Sakura, _"They're gonna kill me."_

"The final question will not be given until 15 minutes before the end of the testing period, you have one hour total. BEGIN…"

* * *

Just twenty minutes into the test, he had his head on the table, there was no way he was gonna pass, it was now confirmed. He couldn't understand even one of the nine questions and so he figured that he could at least get some rest before getting eliminated. It was then he heard a whisper, it was from Hinata, "Naruto-kun, I'll show you…my test."

He couldn't believe his luck, _"Huh…? Wait a minute, why would she wanna show me her test? Unless of course, it's some kind of trick...! Wait, no, Hinata won't do that, she's nice. But what if Kiba put her up to this, it's possible."_

"Hey Hinata, can I ask you something?" He asked and when she nodded subtly, he asked her, "Why are you helping me?"

Suddenly Hinata went all red and whispered even more lightly which made it almost impossible for him to hear her, but thanks to his over-developed hearing due to the bodily changed caused by the Kyuubi's chakra in his system, he managed to hear her speak, "I-I-I, I don't want you to leave. Well, it would be nice if we can all stick together, I mean the nine of us, being rookies and all."

He thanked the gods for this opportunity, but before he could copy her answers he had another thought, _"Wait a minute, what'll happen if she gets in trouble because of me? What if she gets disqualified? I can't do this to Hinata."_

Naruto looked to his pale-eyed former classmate and then at the sentinel who was sitting by the window, and then the sentinel's gaze connected with his eyes for a brief moment. He gulped out loud and then he whispered, "Thank Hinata, but no thanks. I'll be fine. I don't want to get you in trouble."

Hinata was stunned by his reply and thought, _"Naruto-kun, he cares…"_

" _Damn it! I've got to get my head examined. When the heck did I become so noble?"_ He once again mused to himself as he cried comically.

Just then he heard one of the sentinels calling out, "Candidate number 23, you fail, get out and take your teammates with you." And then, like clockwork the sentinels began calling out random numbers out of the bunch and failed team after team, who all promptly left the hall, some of them made a fuss but they were all literally kicked out of the hall.

" _What am I gonna do?"_ He was racking his brain for any scope of intelligence and nothing came for a moment and that's when he realised something, _"That's it! They said getting caught cheating five times, I only have to cheat once, get one right answer and then sleep the rest of the time. That's enough to not get disqualified. But how do I…? Okay, got it."_

Naruto looked around and found a guy sitting three rows before him, he was just beginning to write furiously; he guessed that this guy must know what he was writing and he slowly brought his hands under the table and held the half-ram seal, and he thought, _"Shadow clone jutsu…"_ Instead of concentrating his chakra near him, he used his legs to send chakra three rows before him; he made a smokeless shadow clone under the table and in a split second the clone henged itself into a pencil. The guy who was writing furiously was so involved in the test that he didn't notice the extra pencil magically appearing on the table. And when the clone disguised as a pencil viewed the first answer, the pencil rolled down the table and dispelled in a small puff of smoke, and he got the memories of his clone and he quickly wrote the answer to the first question. He thanked Iruka-sensei for all those chakra control exercises, if not for the exercises, his improvised spying technique wouldn't have worked.

Meanwhile, Sasuke who was worried that his team would get him disqualified, was happy when he noticed the chakra being emitted out of Naruto's feet via his Sharingan, he figured that his idiotic teammate must have figured out the actual objective of the test; little did he know how wrong he actually was.

Finally, the last fifteen minutes of the test came and the proctor Ibiki Morino called out, "Alright, listen up, here's the tenth and final question." There was pin-drop silence in the hall; everyone was listening with absolute attention, waiting for the last question.

"But before I give you the question, there are some more rules that you need to be aware off…" Ibiki spoke further piquing the interest of everyone including him.

"Very well then, rule number one. Each of you is free to choose not to be given the final question, it's your decision." The proctor announced in a serious tone.

"Say what? What's the catch; let's say we decided not to choose it, what happens then?" The kunoichi from the Sand village, Temari asked out loud.

"If you choose not to take the tenth question regardless of your answers to the other nine, you'll get a zero, in other words, you'll fail, and that means, of course, both of your teammates will fail as well." As soon as the proctor finished, everyone in the hall began murmuring to themselves that they will be choosing to the take the question, and as soon as the proctor heard this, he continued, "Not so fast, you didn't let me finish. If you do accept the question and answer it incorrectly, you will not only fail, you will be barred from taking the chunin exam ever again."

"Hey, that's bull, man. What kind of bogus rule is that? There are lots of people here who's taken the test before." Kiba stood up and yelled at the proctor.

Ibiki began laughing when he heard the outraged yell from the Inuzuka boy, "I guess you were just unlucky, I wasn't making the rules before, but I am now. Of course, if you don't want to take it, you don't have to, if you're not feeling confident then skip it, you can come back and try again next year." With that, the proctor laughed cruelly once again.

" _WHAAAT…? If I couldn't answer these nine questions, what chance do I have about answering the last one…? If I choose not to take this, then I'll get another chance next year. Maybe, I can take the test next year. Maybe I could cheat off on that guy once again; I'll still have three more strikes, if they'd saw me cheating last time, right…? There's no turning back now, I'll never give up, I'll never go back, not now, not ever, believe it."_ He mused on his thoughts and mentally resolved to take the final question. He looked up determined and confident for the first time in the last hour.

The proctor announced, "Now then, if you're ready, the tenth and final question, those who don't want to take it, raise your hand. Your number will be recorded and then you're free to go."

A few minutes of staring around the classroom, finally the guy sitting next to him stood up, he gave up and so did his teammates. Slowly one by one, many stood up and gave up on the last question. After ten minutes, no one else was leaving, meanwhile, Sakura who was about to buckle under the pressure and give up, stayed when she got a glare from Sasuke.

"Well then, I admire your determination if nothing else, for those of you remaining there's only one thing left to do, and that's for me to tell you, that you've all passed the first exam." Ibiki finished by shocking everyone in the room.

Sakura stood and asked loudly, "Hold on. What just happened? What do you mean we passed? Where's the tenth question?"

"There never was one, not a written one at least; actually your decision to stay was the answer to the tenth question." For the first time, the proctor smiled and answered proudly.

"Wait for a second, the other nine questions you gave us were just a waste of time, is that what you're saying?" Temari asked outraged.

"No, no, not at all, quite the opposite, the first nine questions had an important purpose. It was to test your ability to gather strategic information under the most adverse circumstances. I designed this test to check your teamwork since all the questions were set on a team basis, anything you did would affect you and your teammates. Secondly, the test itself was to encourage you into cheating your way past it, in fact, it was compulsory that you cheated, but you had to do it in a subtle way, not cheating at all is better than cheating clumsily. Bear in mind that information is the key to everything but also remember disinformation can be dangerous than no information at all. And the last question was to check your determination, whether you'll choose the easy way out or go through it the hard way. As ninjas we can't choose to be in danger or not, it's an occupational hazard, it's mandatory that we do dangerous missions for the best of the village; these are the qualities of a Chunin. You have earned the right to continue to the next step. I hereby declare this stage of the chunin selection exam completed, I've nothing left but to wish you all good luck. Congratulations to all those who passed..." The scary proctor congratulated them all and dismissed them.

 _"Ohhh, so that's what the test was about, huh? Why the heck didn't I think of that?"_ Naruto wondered to himself as he heard the proctor's explanation of the test.

Suddenly the window on the left corner of classroom broke and a black ball came in, the black ball of cloth expanded and was pinned to the sides by four kunais on the four corners, the cloth had something written on it, 'the Second stage of the Chunin Selection Exam'. And a violet-haired, brown-eyed lady wearing a fitted mesh body suit, a dark orange mini-skirt and a tan overcoat stood before them, "Heads up boys and girls, this is no time to be celebrating. I'll be your next proctor, Anko Mitarashi. Are you ready for the second test, good, let's go…"

Ibiki walked out from behind the screen and spoke with a deadpanned look on his face, "You're early, again." And Anko gave her colleague a short nervous laugh of embarrassment.

"72…? Ibiki, you let all these maggots pass? You must be getting soft." Anko claimed surely.

"Or, it could be a stronger crop of candidates..." Ibiki answered calmly.

"I doubt that… Believe me, when I'm done with them, more than half will be weeded out. Listen up maggots, you've all had it easy so far, but things are gonna be a different first thing in the morning. I'll let your squad leaders know where to meet me, dismissed." Anko claimed and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

* * *

 _ **This is a filler chapter guys, more like background development than anything else, I'll be continuing at this pace. This chapter has a lot of unconscious moments so forgive me about that. And let me know if you want the pace of the story to change.**_

 _ **See ya…**_


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer- I do not own Naruto or its characters…**

 **This is going to be a partially dark yet fun story with lots of talking and some mind-blowing action sequences. If you are a SasuSaku or a NaruSaku fan, please leave immediately, this story isn't for you. I won't bash Sasuke, Sakura or Kakashi much, but needless to say, the story won't be centred on them in any way. No pairing as of yet. The Naruto-centred story developed at a slow pace… Alternate Universe… Alternate Reality…**

* * *

 _ **Forest of Death-**_

A tall metallic fence surrounded the perimeter of what looked like a creepy forest. There were 44 gates equally spaced around it. Inside a river ran through the forest, bisecting the whole forest in half, and a tower was located in the exact centre of the forest, the forest had an average radius of about ten kilometres. Just looking at it from the outside gave him the creeps.

Naruto was too excited to sleep last night, and so he stayed up thinking about the next task until it was around one o'clock. And then he fell asleep, as such, he slept until eight in the morning. And so, when he woke up this morning, he only had forty minutes to get ready and reach the forty-fourth training ground and on the way, he had to stop at Ichiraku's for a small breakfast because he didn't feel like eating leftover bread and milk. And since it was morning, Ayame-oneechan made him have rice instead of ramen, which sucked because he was really looking forward to having more than a few bowls of ramen.

And now, he was standing in front of what looked like a very creepy forest, being a little winded because he did everything and made it to the training ground in just around forty minutes. The very sight of the creepy forest gave him goose-bumps, "What the heck is this place?"

And he got the answer soon enough because the proctor from yesterday evening announced, "This is the location for the second phase of the exam. It's the forty-fourth battle training zone but we call it the Forest of Death."

"Now before we begin this test, I have something to hand out to you all. It's just a standard consent form. Before the test, all of you are going to have to read over this form and then sign it." Anko instructed them and took a stack of paper forms.

"What for…?" Naruto asked curiously.

"Simple, some of you may not come back from this test and I have to get consent to that risk, otherwise your lives will be my responsibility and if something does happen, I'll be the one in trouble." She coolly replied and laughed at it.

" _I had to ask, stupid, stupid, STUPID… Why couldn't I just shut up?"_ He mused to himself beratingly.

"Now, I'll explain what you'll be doing on this test. The first thing you need to know is that it will tax every one of your survival skills." Anko spoke casually.

"Secondly, I'll give you all a description of the terrain on the practice field, the 44th battle training zone has 44 locked entrance gates, there are rivers and a forest inside, and in the centre is a locked tower located 10 kilometres from each gate. It's in this confined area that you'll undergo the survival test, the test consists of anything-goes battle to get your hands on these scrolls." She explained and showed them two scrolls, one of them was dark blue in colour and the other was white with grey linings.

Someone from the crowd asked, "Both of them…?"

And the proctor answered, "Yes, you'll be fighting to get both, a heaven scroll and an earth scroll. Altogether, 26 teams will be taking part in this test so half of those teams will be going after the heaven scroll and the other half will be trying to get the earth scroll. I'll hand over one kind of scroll to each team and that's what you'll be vying for."

Anko paused for a moment to gauge the reaction of the crowd and when she was satisfied by the sense of worry she found on their faces, she continued again, "Now to pass the test, your entire squad must bring both a heaven and an earth scroll to the tower. The test has a time-limit of five days. This test is to measure the endurance behind enemy lines, this is designed to be a gruelling test and I'm sure some of you won't be up for the challenge."

The Tokubetsu jonin once again paused hoping for some questions, but when no questions came, she continued, "There are also some ways you can get disqualified. If all three members of the team can't make it to the tower with both the scroll after five days, you fail. If a team loses a member or a member becomes incapacitated and not continue, you fail. And finally, none of you, I mean absolutely none of you may take a look at the contents of the scrolls until you've reached the tower."

Everyone in the crowd looked at each other after hearing the rules, "Now each team hand over your consent forms over there and get the scroll, after that you'll be given a gate number and when the clock is down to zero, you'll be led inside." Anko finished pointing her finger towards a curtained booth just as three ninjas were pulling up the screens.

With that, they all signed the consent forms and Sakura briefly explained to him that at least half of the teams will fail the survival test, which she had guessed from the rules. And then they got a 'Heaven scroll' when they handed their consent forms to the ninjas at the booth. And they also got a gate number for them to proceed to, they got the number 12 gate, and so they left towards their gate. Slowly the countdown ticked down to zero, and when the gate opened, they rushed in without a moment's hesitation.

* * *

 _ **Ten Minutes into the Test-**_

Naruto groggily opened his eyes and the entire world seemed strange, it took him a few minutes to understand that the whole world was upside down, and it took him a few more minutes to realise that the world wasn't the one that was upside down, he was. He tried to push himself up, but the moment he pushed himself out, he fell down on his head, "Ouch…" It was only after that did he look up and realise that until a moment ago, he was stuck upside down in a crater made at the base of a tree.

He sat up on the ground and began nursing his neck which was aching badly; he shook his heads off of any remaining grogginess and stood up, only to see that neither Sasuke nor Sakura was anywhere nearby. The last thing he remembered was a huge blast of wind pushing him away from his team and into a tree, everything else after that was groggy. He jumped on the tree that he was embedded in until a moment ago, and from there he proceeded south in order to find his teammate not realising that his teammates were actually at the north of his location.

Not three minutes of tree-hopping later, he came face to face with a huge snake the size of a building. Before he could run away, the huge snake coiled over him and swallowed him whole. Inside the snake, he took his kunai and tried to cut the flesh that was crushing him, but the flesh was too pliant that his kunai didn't cut through, it simply bounced.

"Let me go you stupid snake. I'm not gonna be your lunch." He yelled from inside the snake and kept trying to cut the flesh.

"Wait a minute…" He struggled to reach his weapon's pouch and he took a rice ball, "Hey, I was saving this rice ball for lunch; you can have this, now…let…me…go." With that, he threw the rice ball into the flesh and watched it getting digested within seconds.

As he watched the rice ball disappearing into the flesh, he realised that he was getting digested, _"What…? At this rate, I'll be digested within minutes. I can't die here; I'm not the Hokage yet. I'll be letting down Iruka-sensei…, old man Hokage…, Konohamaru…, and Kakashi-sensei…"_

" _No…, I won't die here."_ He determined and he yelled, "Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu…" Outside, the snake's stomach enlarged to the point that the enlarging bulge reached the snake's neck, and in a flash, the snake's body burst open into a million pieces, splattering blood all over the place.

Naruto and his shadow clones bounced out of the dead snake's stomach as it exploded, but he didn't see that he was heading straight for a tree's branch until a moment too late. His victory over the snake was short-lived because, within seconds, the back of his head came into contact with the tree's branch with enough force that it knocked him unconscious almost instantly while his clones dispelled. The last thing he saw was accelerating straight towards the ground, falling face first into the grass, and then all he remembered was stars.

* * *

 _ **Back in Konoha-**_

Back inside the village, by the sacred burial grounds, blood was splattered on the statue of Buddha. There were three grass ninjas lying dead by the burial grounds, ninjas with their faces peeled off by the result of some unknown ninjutsu. The chunins Mozuku, Kotetsu and Izumo who were inspecting the corpses were sure of that much.

"That is no way to treat a Buddha..." Mozuku spoke seeing the blood splattered on the statue.

Izumo turned towards Mozuku and asked, "What do you think? It's some kind of ninjutsu isn't it?" Mozuku nodded in return to the question.

Meanwhile, Kotetsu who was kneeling on one knee before the corpses and inspecting the bodies closer spoke carefully, "Whatever this is…, it's a problem. Just when things were running so smoothly…!" Kotetsu sighed out loud.

"We've got to report this…, go get the proctor!" Kotetsu suggested and Mozuku nodded in agreement and disappeared in a black blur that moved upwards in the air.

Second phase proctor Anko Mitarashi was enjoying her favourite dumplings with some red bean soup. Suddenly, Mozuku appeared before her in a puff of white smoke, "Pardon me, ma'am. But there's a problem…"

"Mmm…, what sort of problem?" Anko inquired lethargically.

"Corpses ma'am, three of them…"

Anko whined at the chunin, "Come on, I'm trying to eat here."

"I think you'll want to see them. There's something strange about them." Mozuku insisted to the Tokubetsu Jonin.

" _What's so strange about corpses apart from it being dead?"_ Anko mused on hesitantly for a few moments. However, after a few minutes, she decided to follow Mozuku back to the corpses once she finished her dumplings.

Anko and Mozuku arrived at the burial grounds, and at first glance, Anko was surprised to see the condition of the corpses. Izumo spoke as soon as Anko arrived, "I went through their belongings, found their identification, they're ninjas from Hidden Grass village, and all three of them were registered for the chunin exam. They weren't just killed…"

Izumo never finished but Anko continued, "Their faces, they're gone… Almost as if it's peeled off…"

Anko's eyes widened, her breath quickened, she realised the forbidden jutsu and understood the signature of the technique used and who used it, she mused with absolute terror marring her thoughts, _"There's no doubt it, this is 'his' jutsu. Why is 'he' here? What's 'he' doing in the chunin exam?"_

"Okay, I need photos of what these three looked like, where are their IDs?" Anko almost yelled at the chunin.

"Right here, ma'am…" Mozuku answered and promptly handed the IDs to Anko.

Anko took the photos and memorised the facial features of the three dead Grass ninjas as she thought to herself, _"He's got to have one of these faces."_

"We've got big trouble here." Anko announced in complete seriousness, which earned the attention of the three chunins, "Okay, get moving, tell Hokage-sama exactly what's happened here. And while you're at it, tell ANBU black ops to get a couple of convoys to the Forest of Death. Tell Hokage-sama that…, Orochimaru is here."

The chunins who heard Orochimaru's name were shocked to their core. The three chunins disappeared almost instantly and Anko took the photos with her and headed back to the 44th training ground with the intent of going into the Forest.

* * *

 _ **That Evening-**_

Naruto was unconscious for the better part of the day; however, now he was standing between the branches of what looked like the tallest tree around. He was nearly at the very top of the tree; as he was facing the sun, he surmised from the position and the colour of the sun, he could tell that it was around half past five in the evening.

He then climbed even higher to the very top edge of the tree, in order to get a better idea of where he actually was in the forest. To his right, not very far from his position, he saw what looked like the edge of the forest and to his left; he saw the forest going on and on to the line of his sight, meaning he had to proceed to left. He knew that the village was in the North, so he surmised that he had to head south towards the tower. He hoped that he would either find his teammates on the way to the tower or else he would meet them there if they had made it there already.

He jumped down and landed perfectly on another branch close to the base of the tree and using that recoil momentum, he began tree-hopping towards the tower. Almost an hour later, he was still travelling at his best speed atop the branches of consecutive trees. Suddenly, he felt as if someone was following him to his left back side.

A moment later, he saw a kunai zooming past him over his left shoulder, it was only at the very last second did he notice the paper bomb attached to the hilt of the kunai that was fluttering in the wind. Panic grew on his face as he tried to stop mid-jump and dodge the paper bomb, but before he could do it, the paper bomb caught on fire and it blew. The explosion sent him flying backwards through a few branches before landing on top of a huge boulder that shattered on impact. His chest was burnt badly and his back was severely scratched in the fall, while his mind was completely overcome with pain as he rolled over from the shattered boulder and fell face first into the mud. He honestly didn't know how he was still awake with all the pain that he was feeling.

"Look at what we have here, Katsuro!" A short teen with several scars on his face spoke with a bloodthirsty grin on his face.

"I think we have a stray mutt lost in the woods, Kenji." A voice responded shortly, this guy was taller but he was also muscular.

He heard two voices, but he somehow felt like there was a third person with them and it made sense to him because the test only allowed a three-man team into participating. He didn't realise that he was actually sensing the ninjas' chakra and not just feeling their presence; the newly awakened Uzumaki genes gave him chakra sensory abilities which to him felt rather unused and uncomfortable.

He had never felt so much pain in his life, but he had to survive, he wasn't going to give up on his life. Ever since he could remember everyone told him that he would never become a ninja and yet here he was, he was a genin of Konoha, everyone told him that he would never have friends, but now, he had teammates whom he considered as friends. He was still going to prove everyone wrong; he was still going to become Hokage one day. And, he was nowhere near giving up.

Just then one of the attackers jumped down and landed beside his legs. Since he was lying face down he hoped that he had the element of surprise, and he suddenly drew a kunai from under his sleeve and he swung his right hand back in an arc trying to stab the one named Katsuro in the hip, but the ninja simply back stepped and avoid the swing. Instead, the moment his hand moved past the guy, the ninja caught his hand and held it to his far left and used his exposed position to kick him in the face, effectively dislocating his right arm. And he, screamed at the top of his lungs in a mixture of pain and despair, "AHHHHHH…"

The two other ninjas dropped down from the trees and landed near their teammate, meanwhile, Katsuro pried the kunai out of his right hand and released the hold on his dislocated arm as it fell limply beside him. The ninja furthermore stepped on the blonde's injured back to keep him from making any moves.

Katsuro inspected the kunai and spoke to his leader, "Look at this kunai, Shiro…, low quality, literally the one made out of scrap metal or something. I never thought anyone actually bought much less used these kinds of weapons."

The one referred to as Shiro walked forward and took the kunai from his teammate's hand and ordered commandingly in a gruff tone, "Check if he has a scroll."

The guy named Katsuro grabbed his weapons' pouch and ripped it off of his hip strap and checked inside it, "Nothing, just more of those cheap weapons, a few storage scrolls and a book on…tracking." The guy commented in a disgusted tenor.

"Look at this pipsqueak, hideous orange dress, obviously no talent, a fool who uses weapons like these. I think he's one of those dead-weight bastards that hold his own team down. There's no way anyone with a half a brain would give this guy the scrolls for safekeeping. Let's beat the location of his teammates out of him." With that, the leader Shiro was about to move in and beat him.

"Shiro, you said I'll get to play this time." The one named Kenji asked seriously.

The leader looked at his teammate and spoke, "Fine… We have two Heaven scrolls and all we need is an Earth scroll, if his team has an Earth scroll then I want to be in the tower by morning, so you make it quick."

Kenji took what looked like a curved dagger from his holster and walked closer to the downed jinchuriki. The ninja named Kenji rolled Naruto over on his back and then stepped on Naruto's legs and he grabbed the blonde jinchuriki's neck and brought the dagger to his bleeding chest, right atop the left lung. Naruto tried to use his left functioning arm to grab on Kenji's neck in return but Katsuro firmly stomped on his left wrist and pinned it to the ground in order to prevent him from using his hand.

Kenji grinned cruelly since the only thing that made them all visible was the full moon's light, the grin went unnoticed by everyone except Naruto, who was determined not to speak. Kenji placed the tip of his dagger and plunged the tip on the blonde boy's burned skin through the burnt jacket, "Tell me, where are your teammates?"

"I don't know…" The tip of the dagger caused him enough pain to persuade him into talking and Naruto struggled to answer due to the choking grip on his neck.

"Wrong answer…!" Within an instant, Kenji pushed rest of the dagger into Naruto's chest.

" **AHHHHHH…"** This time the scream was even louder than before that it echoed through the forest, many genin teams across the forest heard the scream and most of them didn't give a damn while a few felt sorry for whoever that was screaming.

Naruto's sapphire blue eyes stopped still for a brief second as he stopped breathing. Then the pupils in his eyes constricted to become slit-eyed like a cat's, it narrowed his vision, soon the blue slitted eyes turned blood red, and it further exponentially magnified his narrowed vision. His whisker marks deepened, his nails grew longer and became sharper than the sharpest of needles, and his canines extended like a wolf's. His strength grew by several times and his speed was amplified by at least times ten.

He suddenly used his left hand and grabbed around the sole of Katsuro's right leg that was on his palm and in a show of pure strength; he threw Katsuro in the air. And in a flash, he grabbed Kenji's neck and dug his nails into the artery of the ninja's neck and tore his throat out. A moment later, Kenji's body was swung away to the side like a rag-doll, meanwhile, Katsuro back-flipped and stuck on to a tree using chakra on the soles of his feet. Shiro, the leader of the team watched in horror to what happened to his teammate. Shiro fell down on his ass and looked up to see the blonde boy who was on the ground a moment ago was now standing straight under the moonlight like a man possessed, all Shiro saw was the two red-slitted eyes.

A thin red aura surrounded Naruto and the kunai inserted in his chest was slowly pushed out and as the kunai fell to the ground, his wound healed almost instantly, his dislocated right arm popped back into its original place, the burnt skin on his chest and his severely scratched back healed within seconds. The cells in his body repaired and regenerated, to the point that it restored his body almost instantly.

Katsuro watched in shock as the boy who was under their mercy a moment ago was now standing before them posing a threat. Katsuro knew that with Kenji dead that there was no way his team could continue. His rage got the better of him as he yelled out in anger and jumped on Naruto to punch him, "You, bastard…"

The punch connected to the blonde jinchuriki's face but Naruto didn't budge. He simply shifted his eyes to the left and began staring into Katsuro's eyes; the instant Katsuro's eyes connected with the jinchuriki, the ninja from the Hidden Valley village felt an extraordinary level of killing intent that had him paralysed in fear. Shiro seeing the danger his teammate was in, moved for the kill armed with his kunai, but just as he was within striking range, time slowed as he found himself staring into the red slitted eyes of a beast.

Moments later, the two paralysed ninjas from the Hidden Valley village hung a foot above the ground being choked by the death grip on their necks held by the jinchuriki, both ninjas didn't know when Naruto caught their neck or when he began choking them, but they struggled to pry themselves off nonetheless. With each passing second, the grip on their necks became tighter and tighter until finally, the struggling of the ninjas seized completely. Katsuro and Shiro were dead along with their teammate Kenji. Naruto dropped both the corpses to the ground and paced backwards a few steps and then roared like a beast towards the full moon at the top of his lungs, **"ARGHHHHHH…"** A full primal roar, which could be heard by almost all the genins who were scattered across the forest, a roar which alarmed them!

* * *

 _ **At the Tower-**_

Anko was sitting on a couch on the top floor of the tower, two ANBU ninjas stood before her. Anko spoke seriously, "This is turning into a real mess, but there's no way we can cancel the test."

The ANBU wearing the bird mask asked curiously yet impassively, "What do you mean?"

Before Anko could answer, a bearded chunin opened the door, "Sorry to interrupt…"

Anko being annoyed by the interruption asked rudely, "What do you want? We're talking about something important."

The chunin apologised almost immediately, "I'm sorry, but it's this tape, you have to see it."

The ANBU wearing the monkey mask inquired, "What is it?"

The chunin inserted the cassette into the VCR player and played it, it was the security video from inside the tower, it showed the trio of genins from the Hidden Sand village, "Okay, now when you watch this, pay attention to time stamp at the top end of the screen."

Anko watched closely to the time stamp and her eyes widened, "What? But that means…"

"That's right, Anko-san! This was recorded from inside the tower, it's unbelievable. Those ninjas finished only an hour and thirty-seven minutes after the test started, they completely destroyed the previous record by four hours. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Those ninjas from the Sand village, they are way above genin level." The bearded chunin summarised carefully.

"I'm afraid it's not just that…" Anko stated as if there was more to it.

"What do you mean, Anko-san?" The chunin asked curiously.

Anko decided to elaborate as she walked towards the window to watch the forest, "Its ten kilometres from the test entrance gates to the tower and in between are ferocious animals, poisonous insects and not to mention the other ninjas, could they have really avoided all those things? Especially the red-haired kid in the front…"

"What's so special about him?" The chunin asked not understanding what Anko meant.

"You mean you didn't see?"

The chunin immediately re-winded the tape and watched carefully, the ANBU in the bird mask spoke, "That is quite a surprise."

The chunin still couldn't see anything out of the ordinary apart from the time stamp, "I still don't get it, what is it that I'm supposed to seeing here?"

"It's what you're not seeing. Look closely at his body." The taller ANBU in the monkey mask spoke evenly as he tried to guide the chunin.

"I see it now…" The bearded chunin's lips thinned as he understood what Anko had meant.

Anko commented out, "Not one single scratch and not a single speck of dust on his clothing."

The ANBU took turns to speak; the one in the monkey mask spoke first, "He must have some special ability." And the one in the bird mask continued, "It's been a long time since we've had such a promising candidate, but his eyes are…pure evil."

* * *

 _ **Next Morning-**_

The blonde-haired jinchuriki woke up with a tired groan, he didn't know why but every part of his body ached. He stood up and wiped the sand from his eyes and looked around so that his eyes can adjust to the light. It was early morning; one day had passed since the test began. His eyes adjusted to the light and he looked around in horror to see three corpses lying around him, one corpse on the far edge of the clearing to his right and two others a little close by on his left. The one on his right was lying in a pool of blood while the other two looked clean but with mangled throats.

As he saw the corpses, he realised that he was the one who had killed these guys; he remembered the hazy events that happened last night. He quickly touched his chest and looked closely to see that there wasn't a single scratch on his chest even after taking the brunt of a paper bomb or even after being stabbed. He was now sure that something had happened to him, something that obviously concerned with the fox that was imprisoned in his tummy.

As he was mentally cursing the fox for what had happened last night, he also failed to be thankful for just being alive. He was unconscious for a whole night in the forest of death with blood-soaked corpses nearby, it was a miracle that no blood-sucking leeches or giant flesh-eating bugs, bears or snakes had found him and killed him in his sleep. He had to thank the fox for that; the fox's evil chakra that he used last night had left an 'oppressive stench' in the surroundings that kept both dangerous wildlife and other genins away from him.

They say that a ninja's first kill is by far the hardest, but he wouldn't know anything about that because the psych counsellor who spoke to every other student in the academy 'surprisingly' forgot about him. All Naruto knew about the topic known as 'first kill' was sitting outside the exam room one evening waiting for his turn like everyone else who had gone in before him until one of the academy instructors came and told him that the counselling was over and that he was cleared.

He understood that he had taken three lives in cold blood, no amount of anger or the sense of vengeance came close to satisfying the guilt that he was feeling at the moment. The blonde jinchuriki began hyperventilating; he couldn't breathe, he crawled towards the nearby tree and he leaned on it as he curled into a ball and sat there thinking what he had done.

After about an hour of self-loathing and self-destructive thoughts, finally, a thought of desensitisation took hold in his subconscious in order to ease his guilt. He forcefully shifted his attention towards the test in general, he had to finish the test for his teammates, he had to survive this forest, he had to, and his mind didn't allow him to have any other thoughts.

As he was trying to distract himself, the first thing he noticed was the lack of his weapons' pouch; he remembered one of the ninjas that he killed last night ripping the pouch off his belt. He searched around until he found it lying in the grass to his far left; he walked to it while doing his best to ignore the corpses that were littered around the small clearing. As soon as he had it in his hand, he jumped on the branch of a nearby tree and jumped away to another tree to get some safe distance from the corpses.

When he was sure that the bodies of the ninjas he killed were no longer in his line of sight, he sat on the tree he was standing on and inspected his weapons' pouch. Soon, he realised that the only thing left in his weapons' pouch was a single kunai, some spools of wire strings and a few storage scrolls, while none of the explosive tags or flash bombs that he had bought before the exam were there. Atop that, the book Iruka-sensei had given him was missing too and the weapons' pouch itself was torn, he had no doubt that he wouldn't be able to use again.

Since his situation was dire, he was beginning to sulk and that's when he looked down and noticed that the left side of his trousers was burnt up to his thigh, along with his jacket which was both torn and burnt, he was also missing the left one of his sandals. He understood that he had only one choice, which was to scavenge whatever he could from the forest before he went to the tower. Being an orphan without enough money, he often scavenged whatever he could so that he can use them again to lead his daily life; in fact, most of the weapons he used were all scavenged from the various training grounds from all around the village.

He immediately moved back to the clearing which was littered with the corpses and he began scavenging of them for anything that might be useful. And he hit the jackpot, one of those ninjas' boots matched the size of his feet and so he removed it from the corpse so that he could wear them. He took their weapons' pouches and found two Heaven scrolls in one of the bags along with several other sets of weapons, and he prayed to god, _"Thank you…thank you…, THANK YOU for giving me a break…"_

Naruto changed his clothes; he took a set of black pants which he took from one of the ninjas' spare set of clothes and he replaced it with his usual orange pants. The new set of pants was a bit too long for him, but he didn't care. He also took to wearing the open-toed black boots instead of his old blue sandals. He took off the singed orange jacket and the damaged mesh armour beneath it and changed it with a soft sleeveless white shirt and then he once again wore the regular full-arm orange jacket that he had for spare, on top. He strapped two weapon pouches on his belt, one on his left backside and one on his right backside, and after having stockpiled and stashed everything inside the two pouches. He then wore his kunai holder and tied the white sash just above his right knee.

With that, Naruto wasted no time and moved towards where the paper bomb had first exploded and once he found the spot and realised the landmark from the charred tree fragments, he figured the directions and proceeded south from there, towards the tower.

* * *

 _ **By the River Banks-**_

"Sasuke-kun…" A concerned Sakura who very recently had a haircut called out to her crush softly.

Sasuke turned to stare at his pink-haired teammates and he had his Sharingan active. Sakura noticed that something was different about Sasuke's eyes, after their Wave mission, she found out that Sasuke had awakened the Sharingan in his fight with Haku. And after they returned back to the village, she noticed that in Sasuke's spar with Kakashi-sensei that the pattern was two tomoes embedded in a circle around the pupil, but now, Sasuke had three tomoes. It made no sense; she was sure that she only saw two tomoes, but now Sasuke's eyes had three tomoes around the pupil.

Meanwhile, Sasuke knew that his Sharingan was fully matured at long last, he noticed the increased clarity in his usual magnified vision when he fought and broke that Sound ninja named Zaku's arm under the influence of the cursed seal. He also noticed the lesser chakra drain it took for him to keep his Dojutsu active than before. Sasuke stood up as he ate the fishes that they had barbecued over the fire, "I'm calling the shots now, Sakura. Hurry up; we'll be leaving to the tower when you are done eating."

"What about, Naruto?" Sakura asked because she knew that without a member they wouldn't be able to progress further in the exam, while personally, she didn't really care for the Chunin rank or the exam, but since Sasuke dreamed about it, she decided to make it her concern. And she was a little worried about her annoying blonde teammate because they hadn't seen Naruto since yesterday morning and she found herself wondering if Naruto was incapacitated somewhere in the forest.

Sasuke instinctively replied to Sakura in a foul tone, "Naruto's probably lying dead in a ditch somewhere…"

Sasuke, however, was in a bad mood, he didn't give a damn about Naruto or his well-being, seeing how he got his ass handed to him by that Orochimaru guy who attacked them and when he woke up after the fight, there was a cursed seal on his neck which began pulsating some very powerful chakra whenever he used his own chakra and it was very hard to resist and atop that, even when he managed to resist the seal, it constantly kept stinging him.

Sakura couldn't believe what she just heard; she looked at Sasuke in pure shock. Sasuke seeing Sakura's look of shock sighed out loud in exhaustion and then he spoke in a diffusing manner, "If Naruto isn't dead already…, the first place he'll go when he can't find us will be to the tower. Look, Naruto can use that solid clone technique of his and he can spam a lot of them at a time, he can cover a larger area than both of us separately, if he can't find us, what are the odds of us finding him in this forest? So the tower's where we must go!"

Sakura sounded unsure but still, she asked, "But if Naruto can't make it there, then the exam is over for us right? And we only have an Earth scroll with us; we still need a Heaven scroll."

"Use your head, Sakura. We're not leaving the forest, even if we're disqualified; we're still going to the tower, we can't just go back and leave the forest midway in through the exam. Besides, if Naruto did make it to the tower and if we still have a chance at this exam, we need another scroll and I know just the place to get it." Sasuke replied with an ambitious grin on his face which only scared the pink-haired girl.

Once they were finished with their little break, both Sasuke and Sakura jumped away into the treeline and disappeared as they proceeded in the direction of the tower.

* * *

 _ **At the Tower-**_

"If qualities of heaven are your desire, acquire wisdom to take your mind higher. If earthly qualities are what you lack, train your body and prepare to attack. When Heaven and Earth are opened together the perilous paths will become righteous forever, this something is the secret way that guides us from this place today." Naruto read as he walked in through the door that had the number 12 on it, he was now standing in what looked like a huge hall with railings on the first floor on both the sides of the hall as if it was mainly for the spectators to watch.

" _Can they make it any more confusing?"_ He thought to himself. Honestly, he had no clue to what the writings in the hanging scroll that hung on the front and centre wall of the room meant, but he didn't care as he simply walked to the door on the far right corner intent on opening it.

He twisted the doorknob but the door didn't open, he took the spool of wire string from inside one of his pouches and made a lockpick with it by snaking three wires together into one. He then began picking the lock, but he failed to notice the seal tag on the door that kept it secured, and so he kept trying without the knowledge that even if he picked the lock, the door wouldn't open.

* * *

 _ **Several hours later-**_

Naruto was slumped on the left wall of the room just beside the locked door and he was snoring loudly. After the first few hours of unsuccessful lock picking, he grew tired out of boredom and soon his thought began wavering towards the images of the people he killed in the forest and to distract himself, he decided to take a short nap.

A fly slowly flew by Naruto's nose and unfortunately, he inhaled just as the fly flew past his nose. The fly went into his nose and he inhaled it deep in and that broke him out of his sleep as he suddenly sneezed out loud, "ACHOOO…"

Since he was awake; he groggily looked around and found that the room was still empty. He scratched his head and stretched up his arms in order to get rid of that rigidness off his bones. He stood up from the ground and decided to take a walk to clear his mind. He walked to the entrance door of the hall and stepped out to the open clearing just outside the tower.

Walking around the tower while easing his muscles, he noticed a balcony on the topmost floor just beneath the roof; being curious he jumped up to the balcony and noticed that the door on the balcony too was locked, so he simply sat down and began watching the night sky and the moon in it. The moon seemed to be a little farther away in its position than from yesterday night, but Naruto didn't care as he continued to gaze serenely at it, forgetting about all his worries. However, the blonde jinchuriki didn't notice the benevolent old Hokage standing atop the roof, who watching the blonde boy with a smile, who was stargazing obliviously.

* * *

 **Hi guys, another chapter is done, hope you like it.**

 **See ya…**


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer- I do not own Naruto or its characters…**

 **This is going to be Naruto-centred story developed at a slow pace… Alternate Universe… Alternate Reality… No pairing as of yet…**

* * *

 _ **With Sasuke and Sakura-**_

It was almost morning, they were starting their third day in the forest, and they were still walking towards the tower. "Oh, for crying out loud, that tower isn't getting any closer." Sakura dropped to her knees and supported her arms on the ground in fatigue and complained out loud.

Meanwhile, Sasuke was grinning madly as he realised that his plan had worked, they were in a genjutsu, it means that they were close to the tower and the ninjas who were targeting them was hiding somewhere nearby. He was counting on this because they were one scroll short and he figured that this was the perfect place to get the needed scroll, if by some miracle Naruto makes it to the tower by the end of the fifth day, he figured that he would need it to progress further in the exam, and he knew better than to expect scrolls from Naruto seeing that his blonde teammate had no skills whatsoever.

All of a sudden, the mitsudomoe seal pattern on Sasuke's back-left side of his neck began glowing in a deep shade of orange-red. Soon, glowing flame-like markings elongated from the glowing seal and covered the left side of his body, and then the glowing stopped altogether and turned black in colour as Sasuke awakened his fully matured Sharingan in both his eyes. Sakura, who was on all fours towards Sasuke's right back side didn't notice Sasuke activating the cursed seal or his Sharingan.

"Wait here, Sakura. Don't interfere…" With that order, the Uchiha shot into the trees in a speed that completely blinded Sakura as she didn't even see Sasuke move, in her eyes, Sasuke just disappeared.

Sakura stood up as she heard noises coming from the trees around her, several thumps, thuds and something loud as if an object was being smashed and finally, a loud scream that echoed endlessly in the forest. She took a kunai and held it in standard attack position, fearing for Sasuke's life. The shrubs trembled and in the moment of terror, Sasuke walked out through the leaves while sporting a frustrated look.

"Sasuke-kun…" Sakura called out in concern as she noticed the glowing flame-like markings from the cursed seal slowly receding back into the mitsudomoe pattern on the left side of Sasuke's neck.

Sasuke complained in anger, "I couldn't find a scroll from those Rain village ninjas. The team must have lost their scroll already, just our luck."

Seeing Sakura's blank look, Sasuke asked indifferently, "What…?"

"What happened? I mean…what…just…happened?" Sakura asked being clearly oblivious to their situation.

"Good god, you're even more useless than Naruto. We were stuck in a genjutsu, we were walking in circles, and the rain ninjas who placed the illusion were trying to exhaust our stamina. I just took care of them and I couldn't find another scroll. Let's go, we're going to the tower as soon as possible, there's nothing for us out here." Every word Sasuke spoke had an unadulterated anger about it, Sakura felt like crying, she didn't know what she did to deserve this treatment from Sasuke.

She sadly followed as Sasuke jumped on a tree and began hopping towards the tower without another word, and being free of the genjutsu, this time, the tower was getting closer as they kept moving forward.

What Sakura didn't know was that Sasuke had murdered all three rain ninjas in cold blood in search of a Heaven scroll. Sasuke had made a decision to use the cursed seal when necessary but not in front of others, while he didn't care if he used it in front of Sakura because he knew that he could keep his female teammate quiet, but he was determined not to let others see him using it.

* * *

 _ **The Tower-**_

It was morning; the sun had just come up, showering light into the forest. Both Sasuke and Sakura were almost at the tower, or rather they were near the entrance of the clearing that surrounded the tower. They had combed through the treeline for any traps other teams might have set for them, and when they were sure that there was nothing, they walked into the clearing and towards the tower.

The moment they entered the clearing, they were shocked to see a small campfire at the far end of the clearing. On top of the fire, a huge piece of rib meat was being grilled with herbs on the rib-cage for some flavour. In front of the fire, a sun-kissed blonde-haired boy clad in black pants, open-toed black boots and his signature orange jacket with standard red Uzumaki swirl stitched on the back of the jacket. He had two weapon pouches strapped on both the sides of the back of his belt.

Sakura and Sasuke cautiously proceeded towards the blonde hoping that it wasn't a trap of some kind, finally when they got close enough to see his face, they dropped their guards simultaneously seeing Naruto mesmerised in a trance all the while drooling over the piece of meat that was being cooked over the fire as if it had the meaning of life, in it. All doubts of a possible trap vanished in an instant as a lone vein popped out on Sakura's forehead while she pulled back and punched Naruto in the back of his head, sending the blonde flying over the fire and head first into the ground on the other side, "BAKA…"

"Where were you, dobe?" Sasuke followed behind Sakura's action while sounding indifferent, as Naruto sat up with a groan.

Naruto's eye twitched angrily as he stood up and screamed at his teammates, "I WAS RIGHT HERE, YOU SCHMUCKS." Sakura's angry gaze changed into a look of shock while Sasuke raised a single eyebrow in surprise, they had never seen Naruto raising his voice against Sakura and with Naruto now standing they noticed the change in attire which was honestly quite a development.

"When did you get here, Naruto?" Sakura asked softly to the blonde who was nursing his aching head.

Naruto laughed awkwardly at Sakura over his sudden loss of temper and replied in a more goofy tone quickly forgetting his outburst, "I got here yesterday, around noon."

Naruto also noticed something different about his pink-haired teammate, "Sakura-chan, what's with your hair? When did you get a haircut, and who cut it, 'cause it looks awful."

Sakura's eyes twitched in anger as Chibi Sakura inside the kunoichi's head screamed in tandem to the enraged girl, "BAKA…! LOOK AT YOUR DRESS…, you look…you look…ahhh…" Sakura struggled to find a nasty insult regarding Naruto's new outfit because it was actually nicer than the eyesore he used to wear before, she couldn't come up with anything insulting.

"Enough, both of you... Dobe, break time is over for you because once we both get some rest; we're heading into the forest. We still need a heaven scroll for us to move to the next stage of the exam." Sasuke ordered assuming him to be the leader of the team. Meanwhile, Sakura looked like she was about to collapse since she realised that they were about to go back into the forest with the only upside being the meat that was being cooked.

Naruto, however, wasn't worried in the least as he grinned brightly and reached his hand into his left weapons' pouch and took the two heaven scrolls that he had in his possession, "I guess we're in luck…"

Sakura smiled brightly and Sasuke smirked in a mixture of happiness and surprise. Sakura had no intention of going back into the forest and Sasuke was glad that he wouldn't have to bust his ass to pull his team through to the next round. Although, Sasuke's opinion about Sakura took a huge hit as the Uchiha realised that his blonde teammate was far more useful than Sakura and that he had misjudged Naruto.

* * *

 _ **In the Tower-**_

They spent the last thirty minutes finishing their lavish breakfast provided by Naruto's generous meal consisting of deliciously juicy grilled rib meat of a wild boar. Once they were all satisfied by the meat, they decided to enter the tower.

"If qualities of heaven are your desire, acquire wisdom to take your mind higher. If earthly qualities are what you lack, train your body and prepare to attack. When Heaven and Earth are opened together the perilous paths will become righteous forever, this something is the secret way that guides us from this place today." Sakura read out loud and gave a curious look while muttering the words to herself in a repeating manner as if she was trying to figure it out.

"See, I told ya, no clue…" Naruto commented obliviously, as usual, with both his hands locked at the back of his head.

Sasuke, who was standing facing sideways with his arms folded, scoffed audibly as he spoke indifferently, "We obviously have to open both the scrolls at the same time, dobe."

"Huh…?" Naruto gave a curious look at his Uchiha teammate.

Sasuke audibly sighed out in frustration, and with that, he took the scrolls, one heaven and one earth scroll and he opened them simultaneously. As soon as he opened them, the scrolls began emitting white puffs of smoke and Sasuke then threw it farther away from them. As the smoke cleared, Chunin Iruka Umino was standing there with a smile.

"IRUKA-SENSEI…!" Naruto yelled excitedly.

"Iruka-sensei…" Sakura muttered thankfully.

And Sasuke's response was the usual, "Hn…"

"It looks like you've all been through a lot." The chunin spoke softly as he checked the wristwatch on his left hand and continued, "And it looks like you have finished the second test just a few hours under three days. Good work, guys…"

Naruto's grin decreased just a bit as he asked, "What's with the surprise entrance, Iruka-sensei? Why are you here?"

"At the end of the second exam, we chunins are supposed to take the test takers back, and it was just good luck that I got to be the one who was the messenger for you guys." The chunin answered his favourite blonde's question.

"Congratulations, you've passed the second exam." Iruka declared to the exhausted team.

The hyperactive blonde began jumping around in excitement, "You mean that's it? We've passed? OH YEAAAHHH…!" Meanwhile, both Sakura and Sasuke collapsed to the ground and began resting their legs.

"What would have happened if we had looked at the scroll in the middle of the exam?" Sasuke surmised that the scrolls were to summon the chunins to their location once they have reached the tower. If so, he naturally wondered what would have happened if they opened the scroll midway into the exam as he remembered being told not to open the scroll or take a look at its contents under any circumstances by the proctor.

"Sharp as ever, huh, Sasuke?" Iruka commented and continued with a pause, "Part of this exam was to test how well you'll see a difficult mission all the way through. To put it simply, you knew that opening the scroll was against the rules, yet we wanted to see if you can resist the temptation. This is further proof that this exam is not just to test your physical parameters as a chunin, but also to test you mentally."

Sakura being curious after Sasuke's question asked to the chunin, "Say we opened it in the forest, what would have happened sensei?"

"If a scroll was opened prematurely, we were ordered to knock out whoever opened it. Some ninjas found this truth the hard way." The chunin answered as well as warned the ninjas of the outcome.

" _Huh…, there was a rule about not opening the scroll? Good thing I didn't remember that!"_ Naruto mused to himself rather happily because he knew that if he remembered that, then he would have opened it in the forest and would have been knocked by a chunin.

"Well, let's get you all to your genin quarters. You three will have to wait until the second exam is over for the others as well." Iruka stated and with that, he ushered the genin team with him to the door.

Iruka went through a few hand seals and then placed his hand on the seal that was placed between the two sliding doors, and then, the chunin removed the seal in a swift pull and pushed open the door. As Iruka pulled the seal tag off the door, it dawned on Naruto that even if he had picked the lock on the door would have never opened it.

* * *

 _ **Third floor-**_

Iruka led the boys to the first room by the stairs and Sakura to another room nearby. Iruka pointed the first room's entrance and spoke, "This is where you'll be staying boys." And with that, he led Sakura away to the nearby room.

Sasuke who was very tired brushed past the blonde and stepped into the room. And the moment, the Uchiha stepped in, he noticed several others already inside the quarters. On his left, he saw the Sound ninjas Zaku and Dosu who were sitting on their bunk beds by the far corner of the room; male members of team 8, Kiba and Shino were resting on another bed just by the door.

Naruto stepped in behind his teammate and noticed the ninjas inside the room along with a few who were sitting on the other right side of the long room. He noticed a tall boy with the same pupil-less white eyes as Hinata, he briefly wondered if they were siblings and with that guy, he noticed bushy-brows, the sand ninja named Kankuro was quietly napping on one of the beds by the end wall of the room.

"Look at you guys. It took you this long for you guys to get here, huh. Looks like being the 'rookie of the year' is just a title after all…" Kiba remarked at Sasuke with a derisive snort.

"I'm still surprised that they allowed mutts like you to be ninjas." Sasuke retorted back calmly with an arrogant smirk.

The moment he heard the word 'mutt', he remembered something _'I think we have a stray mutt lost in the woods, Kenji.'_ The moment he remembered those words, all the memories from that hazy night when he killed those ninjas came back to him in a flash, not pieces of memories from that night, every single detail that he suppressed came back. He ignored the arguing idiots and he stepped back out of the room and walked to his right and disappeared through the corridors. He had no idea where he was walking off to or what he was doing but he realised that he needed some space to process some things. What he didn't know was that a pupilless pair of eyes was watching him worriedly.

* * *

 _ **West side of the Tower-**_

Team Kabuto was just entering the tower after having followed Sasuke Uchiha and his pink-haired teammate for the last three days. Just as they entered and were about to open their scrolls, a man appeared through the pillar. The man had a distinct snake-like appearance, with very pale skin, golden eyes with slitted pupils, purple markings around his eyes and fang-like teeth; he also had pronounced cheekbones and straight shoulder-length black hair with some locks covering and framing the left side of his face.

Kabuto gave a sideways look to his teammates and the two ninjas gave a nod to Kabuto and a bow to the man and walked into the tower. Kabuto took a small card from his weapons' pouch and handed it to the snake-like man, "Orochimaru-sama, I didn't get a chance to interact with your potential prospect, but I had the opportunity to carefully observe him from the beginning to the end of the exam."

"And what do you think?" The man now identified as Orochimaru asked curiously.

Kabuto thought for a moment and spoke carefully, "He shows promise, and he didn't need my help or the help of his teammates to reach the tower after he was branded with the curse mark. And he is willing to use the power you granted him, Orochimaru-sama, he has the mettle you are looking for."

"Excellent work, Kabuto…" Orochimaru finished with a hiss and disappeared into thin air. And Kabuto simply walked forwards into the tower following his teammates.

* * *

 _ **Main Arena (Two Days Later)-**_

The last two days were uninteresting; Sasuke made it a point to pick fights with every other combatant in the tower. Team 10 arrived several hours ago and as soon as they arrived, Sakura and Ino began fighting and most of it revolved around the topic of whom getting time with Sasuke. An hour ago, he learned a life lesson about never ever breaking up a girl fight because when he interrupted, both of them joined forces and almost broke his nose with a single punch; it was only thanks to his heightened healing that the injury completely healed without a trace, within the hour.

A grand total of seven teams had passed the second stage, leaving twenty-one ninjas for the third round. He heard that Kabuto, the chakra card guy from the first exam quit the exam due to some internal bleeding or something, leaving a total of twenty ninjas. And now, they were all standing in a huge arena before the old Hokage awaiting the beginning of the third exam. The arena itself was rectangular in shape and at the centre side of the front wall, there was a huge structure depicting two hands holding a 'ram' hand-seal.

"Alright, pay attention. Lord Hokage is going to explain the third exam." Anko yelled out to the remaining ninjas on the arena floor.

The aged Hokage stepped forwards from the other Jonins and began, "Before I explain what the third exam entails, I would like to explain something about the test itself."

The Hokage paused for a moment and continued once again, "Let me tell you the true purpose of the Chunin exams. Why do you think the countries hold these exams? It is to improve the ability level of the ninjas who participate and to nurture friendship between the allied nations for sure, but it is also a representation between allied nations."

The third Hokage continued, "Taking a look at our history, all the countries that we are now allied with, were once neighbouring nations that constantly fought for power. After the last shinobi war, all the shinobi nations decided that in order to avoid destroying each other's military strength meaninglessly, those nations picked champions to battle on behalf of their countries on a mutually neutral location. And that was how the Chunin selection exams originally began. In short, these exams are a convenient alternative for war."

"That's good and all, but why do we have to risk our lives for this…?" A voice from the crowd interrupted the aged Kage, but surprisingly, the interruption came from Sasuke. Sasuke asked because his goal had nothing to do with fighting for the sake of the village, his only goal was to acquire vengeance against a certain someone.

"Many leaders and people of prominence from various countries are invited to attend the Chunin exams as guests and also possibly to seek ninjas to work for them. This exam could determine the course of your ninja work from here on out, and more importantly, the people who may watch you will notice you, your strengths and assess the village's quality services. This, in turn, will bring the village with job requests, and the reverse of this scenario is equally possible because requests for the country that is deemed weak will decrease. The stronger our nation is, the better it is when it comes to negotiating with the neighbouring countries, so it's important to show how much military strength our village has, these exams are a chance for each village to show its worth. Remember, our country's strength is our village's strength and the village's strength is our ninjas' strength, and the true strength of a ninja is only achieved when we're pushed to our limits."

The Kage stopped for the crowd to understand the true meaning. After a moment's pause, he continued, "The third exam is a fight for life with the pride of your village and your own dreams at stake."

The aged Hokage gave a pointed stare at a short brown haired man with dark-coloured eyes and pronounced dark markings under his eyes. The man in question stepped forward and gave a respectful bow to the Hokage and walked to the crowd. Once the man was just a few feet away from them, he began, "My name is Hayate Gekko, I'm a Tokubetsu Jonin and I will be your proctor for this stage of the chunin selection exams, it's nice to meet you all."

"We have to have a preliminary exam before we move on to the third exam." After a short pause, the special Jonin continued.

"Preliminaries…? Why…?" Naruto asked loudly.

The proctor calmly replied, "Frankly, we didn't expect so many of you to make it this far in the exam. According to the rules, a preliminary can be held at any stage of the exam to thin out the herd, so to speak. As Hokage-sama told you, many important guests will be arriving to watch the final stage of the exam; we can't afford to waste their time, they've come to see only the best."

The proctor began coughing profusely for a few seconds, "The preliminaries will be starting immediately."

"We just finished barely surviving the last exam, don't we get a break?" He heard Ino moan out in frustration.

Ino's moaning was followed by her teammate Shikamaru's usual whine, "Man, what a drag?"

"The winners will be determined by one on one combat, so if anyone wants to opt out, now's your chance." The proctor offered them a way out.

Naruto closed his eyes and mused determinedly, _"No way, I'm not going back. I'll make it all the way through to the end."_

"Very well, then let's begin…" Suddenly a panel in the front wall opened and a huge screen appeared behind the panel. And soon, the screen lit up and participants' names began shuffling at random and all of a sudden, it stopped. The first match's pairing was displayed; it was Yoroi Akado versus Sasuke Uchiha.

"Participants step forward!" The proctor spoke with a cough.

Both Sasuke and Yoroi both walked forward and stood to face each other. The proctor then continued, "Let's begin the first match. Okay, anyone other than the two opposing candidates can now clear the area and move to the upper level." With that, they all slowly moved to the upper level, so to watch the fight without interrupting.

Meanwhile, Sasuke recollected to himself, _"I can't let them see that I'm willing to use 'that' chakra, which means I can't even use my Sharingan. Using my Sharingan will undoubtedly activate the curse mark; I don't think I can resist it once it's active. Fine, I'll finish this fight with just my taijutsu then."_

* * *

 _ **Upper Level-**_

Naruto was feeling bored, frustrated and sad after having watched the last few fights. Sasuke had defeated Yoroi Akado without much trouble; he was in trouble when the Akado guy locked Sasuke in an arm-bar and kept absorbing Sasuke's chakra, but Sasuke had reversed it by spinning forward and gave a swift kick to the throat which instantly ended the fight.

After the fight, Kakashi had taken Sasuke away and disappeared from sight, and it's been an hour and a half since then and Kakashi still hadn't returned. What Naruto didn't know was that Kakashi had taken Sasuke all the way back to the village after employing the 'evil-sealing method' on Sasuke's curse mark. Kakashi had encountered Orochimaru during his attempt at sealing the curse mark, and so he decided to take Sasuke back to the village's hospital and put an armed ANBU escort outside Sasuke's room for safety.

The second fight was between a sound ninja Zaku Abumi versus Shino from Team 8. The Zaku guy had hollow air tubes in his hand which the ninja used to fire pressurised wind attacks. Shino, however, had used his bugs to clog the tube and when the sound ninja used a wind attack the attack had backfired and in turn, the pressure in the tubes blew his hand apart, and Shino won the match.

The third match was between Kankuro, one of the sand ninjas, and Misumi Tsurugi, one of Kabuto's teammate. Misumi used a technique called the 'Soft Physique Modification' as soon as the fight began and with that he restrained Kankuro, and then the guy threatened to snap Kankuro's neck unless the other forfeited. But then something happened that he didn't expect, it turned out that the Kankuro Misumi was fighting was just a puppet. The real Kankuro was disguised as the puppet in the sack, it turned out that the guy was controlling the puppet with the Puppet Technique from inside the sack. And the sand ninja used the puppet to crush most of Misumi's bones instead and defeated him.

The fourth match was between Sakura and Ino. Those two fought hand-to-hand for a while, but they were both on par that the fight went on with neither of them getting the upper hand. Until Ino used the 'Mind Body Switch Technique' to possess Sakura's body, he hoped that Sakura could regain control of her body, but unfortunately Sakura couldn't reclaim control. What Naruto failed to realise that if only he had gotten emotional and yelled out to Sakura from the upper level, Sakura would have managed to snap out of Ino's control. But with him still affected by his first kill, the feeling of desensitization that had settled on him in the forest didn't allow him to get emotionally involved with anything. And so, Ino easily used her control over Sakura's body to forfeit the match in Sakura's place and won the match pretty easily. And an unconscious Sakura was taken to the medical wing so to rest, while Ino proudly made it back to the upper level to her team.

With Sakura unconscious in the medical wing, while Kakashi and Sasuke unavailable, he was standing alone with no one to cheer for him. The sense of solitude that he was feeling brought back several painful memories from his lonely childhood and from the friendless days back in the academy. He thought that maybe in the team, he would at least get some backup and support when he needed it, but he was wrong, even now, no one cared for him and as always he was still alone.

The fifth match that followed shortly was between Tenten from Bushy-brows' team against that of Temari, one of three sand ninjas. The match was over quickly because every single weapon Tenten threw at the sand ninja was completely repelled away by Temari's huge fan and its subsequent wind attacks, hence the sand kunoichi won the fight without taking as much as a single scratch.

The sixth match was between Shikamaru and Kin Tsuchi of the Sound. The sound kunoichi started the match by dodging Shikamaru's 'Shadow Imitation Technique' and countered by throwing senbon needles with and without bells attached at the end of it. And then the girl used strings attached to the senbon needles to ring the bells from unexpected positions so to divert Shikamaru's attention and to attack him from behind. Shikamaru, however, managed to join her shadow with his; using the shadows of the strings she was holding. With Kin matching Shikamaru's movements, each drew a shuriken and flung it at the other. When it came time for them to duck, Shikamaru ducked backwards successfully, but Kin who was imitating Shikamaru's moves had previously retreated back close to the wall, banged her head against the wall and knocked herself out, which turned out to be the true goal of Shikamaru's battle strategy. And Shikamaru won by surprising everyone with his keen battle tactics.

* * *

 _ **Match Seven-**_

And finally, his name appeared on the panel, it was what he was waiting for. He was matched up against Kiba, who was grinning at him confidently. He turned around desperately hoping to see someone to cheer him on, even when he knew that there were none.

Naruto slowly walked down the stairs to the arena floor, just as he stepped down from the staircase, Kiba jumped from the upper level down to the arena floor. Kiba smirked at the blonde and claimed loudly, "You should forfeit now and save yourself some humiliation."

Naruto didn't reply, instead, he just walked to Kiba and stood to face the Inuzuka while beside the proctor. And the proctor asked, "Any objections…?"

Neither Kiba nor Naruto spoke up any objections and with that, the Proctor continued, "When you're ready, you can begin."

Immediately, Kiba went on one knee while holding a tiger hand-seal and thought, _"Ninja Art of Beast Mimicry: All-Fours Jutsu…"_ Kiba gathered chakra in his arms, legs, muscles and skin, once his chakra was ready, he leaned forward on all fours and suddenly his canines along with finger and toenails grew in size like claws, he could also see visible light blue chakra over Kiba's body.

And in a flash, Kiba shot forward and punched his elbow into the blonde's stomach, Naruto didn't even see Kiba move, he neither expected it nor was he prepared for it. The punch sent him flying backwards and he landed the ground on his back and his form skidded to a stop.

Kiba smiled arrogantly and gave the proctor a glance as he spoke, "Call it, Proctor, he's done for now…" Kiba waited for the proctor to announce his victory but when the announcement didn't come, he turned around and he saw Naruto slowly getting up from the ground without a moan or a groan.

That level of strength in a punch would have knocked Naruto out for good if only it was a week ago, but now, he was better than that. After the event in the forest, his body was far more durable than before. Each time, a person's body healed and repaired, it would be rebuilt better meaning the chances of the person getting the same injury again is lesser than it was before. And since the blonde's healing was off the charts, his body adapted far too quickly, and so he was now far more physically durable than ever before.

Kiba once again shot forward with zero warning. Just as Naruto was sitting up, Kiba punched him straight in the face with all his strength and with all his speed. The blow once again sent Naruto skidding backwards, but this time he was pushed all the way to the other side of the room as he was slammed into the wall. The Inuzuka ninja once again turned towards the proctor waiting for an announcement, being sure that this time the fight was over.

Meanwhile, up in the upper level, Shikamaru smirked, "Thought as much." Ino, who heard Shikamaru speak, added her comment, "I thought Kiba might be too much for him, but that was way too fast."

Naruto turned his head to see the members on the upper level; they were all smirking as if it was obvious that he was on the ground and Kiba standing, all their smug smirks, their smiles, it irked him. Someone had always cheered for the ones fighting in the arena, but he had none, neither his sensei nor his teammates were there to cheer for him or encourage him, and he didn't really think that they would have done so even if they were still around. Something snapped in Naruto's mind, that sense of frightening loneliness turned into despair, and the despair slowly fed into his mind and disappeared completely, it gave way for him access the point of absolute focus.

Kiba, who was waiting for the proctor to call the match, realised that the proctor wasn't calling it for a reason; he once again turned around to see Naruto standing up with a slump while leaning on the wall with his head down, facing the ground.

Kiba sneered at the blonde, "You should have just stayed down, dobe."

And with that, Kiba once again shot forward with everything he had in him, aiming for the face. However, at the last moment, Naruto moved his head to the side like a sloth and avoid the punch, but unfortunately for Kiba, he had punched the wall with all his strength that he felt like the bones in his hand were definitely cracked. Kiba who was engulfed in pain lost his guard for a split second which Naruto used to deliver a full-powered punch in the gut, which briefly pushed Kiba off the ground as he once again landed, off balance, on his feet.

There was pin-drop silence in the hall, through which only Kiba's groaning could be heard as the Inuzuka stumbled as his legs failed him, the Inuzuka fell on his knees while holding his stomach in obvious pain. To everyone else, the match had just gotten interesting.

For a few minutes Kiba groaned in pain and then he signalled his faithful companion Akamaru for help. And when the white dog arrived by its master's side, Kiba gave a stare to Akamaru and gave a nod. With that, both Kiba and Akamaru shot forward in their best speed. Kiba drew a few smoke grenades from his weapons' pouch on approach and threw it at Naruto.

The smoke completely engulfed Naruto, seeing how Kiba could use the smokescreen to attack him; he decided to run outside the smoke to better defend himself from Kiba's attacks. But just as he ran out of the smoke, the ninja dog Akamaru came right at him and pushed him back into the smoke.

Kiba, who was watching carefully, grinned merrily as he thought to himself, _"Hah, he fell for it."_ The smoke slowly cleared, and Akamaru was standing beside a downed Naruto who lay curled unconsciously on the ground. Kiba called out, "Good boy, Akamaru."

Akamaru ran towards Kiba while Kiba was ready to receive his pet happily. However, when Akamaru was just a foot from Kiba, the dog jumped towards Kiba and in mid-air, the dog turned into a puff of smoke and through the smoke, Naruto emerged with a punch aimed for Kiba's head. The Inuzuka ninja being caught completely off guard failed to defend himself, as the punch connected with Kiba's face as the ninja took the full brunt of the attack. But the attack didn't stop there, just as the punch connected, four shadow clones popped into existence behind the falling Inuzuka and held the boy from falling.

One of the clones kicked Kiba in the back of his knee which caused Kiba to buckle down on the ground on his knees in pain. Two clones caught and stretched Kiba's arms to the side and held him using his hands while the other two clones stepped on Kiba's legs and held the boy's shoulders to keep him from moving. All the while Naruto watched as his opponent was restrained by his clones.

Kiba, who was trying to struggle off the grips of the clones, couldn't help but wonder what happened to his loyal pet. He looked closely at the downed clone, only to see the clone that lay slumped on the ground until a moment ago, now held Akamaru pinned to the ground with a kunai to the neck.

Kiba along with many others in the room simultaneously realised that Naruto had defeated the ninja dog when he was stuck in the smoke from the smoke grenade and that he had used a shadow clone to keep Akamaru hidden while Naruto had henged himself as Akamaru in order to get Kiba off guard.

Naruto took his kunai from the holster and placed the tip of the knife on Kiba's forehead skin and spoke with no emotions in his tone, "Give up, now…"

Kiba watched as the kunai on Akamaru's neck inched closer just as he looked away from Naruto and to his downed ninja partner. The angry Inuzuka looked back and forth between his whining pet/partner and the kunai on his head for a few minutes, and then he began contemplating. Finally, the Inuzuka boy held his head high glaring at Naruto, gnashing his teeth as he replied in an angry tone, "I yield."

Naruto didn't take the kunai away, instead, he twisted the knife and held it in reverse grip, lowered it from the forehead to Kiba's neck, and he gave the proctor a look. The proctor, who was watching the match intently, spoke immediately, "The winner is, Uzumaki Naruto." With that, Naruto pulled the kunai away and holstered it and walked away as his clones dispelled in a collective puff of smoke.

Meanwhile, the blonde sand village kunoichi commented, "He's got a good grasp on his jutsus, that's for sure."

And Kankuro concurred to his sister's comment, "Yeah, the kid's not as bad as I thought, for an annoying loudmouth that is..."

Many in the arena were wondering what had happened, they all thought that the Inuzuka kid would have had no problem beating the dead last rookie from the academy. Even the Jonin sensei of Team 8, Kurenai Yuuhi thought as much, but needless to say, she was having second thoughts about her own judgement and the pride she had in her team. They all understood that looks can be deceiving and not to judge a person's abilities on his/her behaviour.

Naruto, on the other hand, was walking up the stairs with a huge stupid grin etched on his face. The jinchuriki was walking up the stairs with a happy bounce on his feet. For the first time in his life, Naruto didn't care how anyone thought of him, he had won a fight and he had done it, spectacularly. For the first time, he felt like he could do something on his own, without the help of others, he felt empowered and he liked it. He wholeheartedly decided to follow this epiphany that he just had, from now on.

* * *

 **Hey people, another chapter finished, hope you like it.**

 **Thank you…**


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer- I do not own Naruto or its characters…**

 **This is going to be Naruto-centred story developed at a slow pace… Alternate Universe… Alternate Reality… No pairing as of yet…**

* * *

 _ **Fifty minutes later-**_

Shikamaru, Neji, Shino, Naruto, Ino, Dosu, Temari, Kankuro and Gaara, were all standing in a line facing the proctor Morino Ibiki from the first test, the proctor of the second test Anko Mitarashi along with their current proctor Gekko Hayate and then the Sandaime Hokage himself.

Naruto was wondering what happened to his teammate because Kakashi had returned alone sometime during the eighth match which was between Hinata and Neji. Personally, he was more pissed off about the match itself than he was about Kakashi not giving a damn about his performance because of what the Neji guy did to Hinata. Neji almost killed her until finally, the proctor intervened and stopped the fight. He was hoping that he would get a chance against Neji in the next round so that he can dole out some real punishment on the guy for what he did to the sweet girl who was more than willing to help him pass the first exam by cheating, even when she had no reason to help him. He silently promised to himself that he would get even with the Neji guy for what he did to Hinata.

After their match, it was Choji's turn to fight and his big-boned friend was pitted against the creepy sound guy. Ino had insulted Choji during the match in order to make him fight against the Dosu guy, and Choji had used something called the 'Multi-Size Technique' to turn himself into a huge ball and then he used the 'Human Bullet Tank Technique'. The Sound guy evaded a few times and kept dodging until Choji's rolling ball technique ran into the wall and got stuck. Then the Dosu guy had used his gauntlet to send a condensed blast of sound waves into Choji's bulk, the sound waves utilised the water content in Choji's body to resonate which increased the attack's effect by several times. In the end, Choji had fainted due to the Sound guy's attack, which led to Dosu Kinuta winning the match.

What he really wanted to think about was the fight between Lee and Gaara, man that wasn't just a match; it was something that's clearly far above genin level. Lee opened something called the Eight Inner Gates, Bushy-brows had removed his weights and had opened up to five of the eight gates and he was so fast and strong that he couldn't even see him move. But still, the sand guy Gaara had defeated Lee in the end and he couldn't help but wonder where he stood when compared to those two, it was obvious that he was nowhere near them in battle strength or skill and that's the level he was striving for. For the first time in his life, he was thinking rationally about improving himself via training than just assuming that he was ready.

Before he could mull over his own thoughts any further, he heard the Hokage announce, "I commend all those who have advanced to the finals for the third level of Chunin exams. Well, there's one person missing, but still, congratulations."

"I will now begin the explanation of the final round."

Naruto once again thought to himself, _"Well, it's about damn time…"_

"In the final round, each of you will put your battle skills on display; you'll demonstrate the power and control you've achieved in your respective disciplines. Accordingly, the final battles will commence one month from now. This is to provide a suitable time for preparation." The Kage spoke calmly.

Naruto, however, had a doubt, "Preparation, for what?"

"Simply this, in addition to announcing the conclusion to the preliminary matches to each country's leaders, we must also have some time to prepare and distribute the summons for the final selection, not to mention that you examinees are going to need the time to prepare for something this important. Right now, you all know your potential adversaries, so that you can prepare accordingly. Even though up to this point all the matches have been real battles, they were conducted on the premise that you're fighting an unknown adversary. But now, that's no longer the case, now that you've battled each other, you all know what to look out for."

"And so, in order to make the test fair and just, we're giving you this month. Each of you must embrace the opportunity, practice hard and learn something new because by now, everyone here knows your techniques, so using your own tired tricks is a sure way to lose in the finals." The Hokage finished.

" _This is it, this is what I've been waiting for, and this is my one chance. This isn't going to be some vacation. I've got to train harder than ever before and win this, to become a Chunin."_ Naruto mused to himself yet again.

The aged Kage continued on with the final instruction, "With all of that behind us, I'd like to begin winding things up, but before we can bring this to an end, first there is one more important matter to take care of for the final round. In a calm orderly fashion, all of you are going to take one slip of paper from the box Anko is holding."

The proctor for the second round walked forward with a wooden box, "Everyone, stay where you are, I'll come to you." Anko spoke as she approached the sound ninja named Dosu, "Just take one." With that, she reached the box to everyone, one by one and everyone took a slip of paper.

The proctor from the first round Ibiki Morino called out loud, "Good, now everyone has one, going from left to right, tell me the number that's written on your slip of paper."

"I've got 9." The creepy sound ninja spoke.

"1…, I got 1…" Naruto announced excitedly.

"7…" The sand ninja Temari answered as if she was bored.

"5…" The sand ninja Kankuro replied with a hint of excitement.

"3…" The sand ninja Gaara spoke out impassively.

"8…" Shikamaru spoke out loud with a yawn.

"10…" Ino answered sounding unsure.

"2…" The pupil-less Hyuga prodigy announced.

"6…" Shino answered swiftly.

Morino Ibiki gruffly declared, "And that means Sasuke Uchiha will be number 4."

"Very good, now I'll tell you about the final selection tournament." The Sandaime exclaimed.

"Tournament…? Is that what this drawing lot was about?" Shikamaru asked logically, putting two and two together.

"Ibiki, you may reveal which ninjas have been paired up." The Kage gave permission.

"Yes sir…!" With that, the torture and interrogation specialist turned his writing pad and showed the pairings to them.

Naruto scrunched his face and looked carefully, the first match was between him and Neji, and he wouldn't have wanted it to be any other way. The second match was between Sasuke and Gaara, seeing how the sand shinobi had fought against Lee; he was a little worried about his teammate. The third match was between Shino and Kankuro, personally, he didn't care if either of them won. The fourth match was between the sand kunoichi Temari and Shikamaru and finally, the last match was between Ino and Dosu.

The initial winners of the five matches will then be further cut down to three contestants, the winners of the first and second matches will fight each other and likewise, the winners of the fourth and fifth match will be pitted against each other, while the winner of the third match will get an automatic bye. And finally, the remaining three contestants will be pitted against each other. Since the judges will be scoring the performance of each genin, the two with the lowest battle ratings among the final three will be set against at first, and then the winner of the match will fight against the one with the highest battle rating.

Naruto's attention shifted when he heard Shikamaru asking a question, "May I ask you a question?"

"You may!" The Tokubetsu Jonin permitted it.

The Nara asked logically, "All right, if this is a tournament does that mean there's only going to be one winner? I mean, only one of us is going to be able to become a chunin then?"

Instead of the Tokubetsu Jonin, the Hokage himself answered Shikamaru's question, "Actually, it's quite the contrary. There are going to be several judges for the final round including myself, the shinobi leaders, the Kazekage, the lords from the various countries that ultimately will be assigning you, your missions. Through this tournament, these judges will be able to make a thorough evaluation of your abilities; they will then decide whether any or all of you possess the qualities required of a chunin. Even if someone loses the first round, they could still become a chunin. So essentially, there's a chance that every one of you could become a chunin, but conversely, there's also a chance that none of you may become a chunin. The advantage is in fighting more rounds in the tournament, fighting more rounds means you'll be getting more chances to display your talents in front of the judges who will decide whether or not to promote you. In a matter of speaking, you're all fighting for that advantage."

"I thank you all for your patience; now let us adjourn until next month." The Kage finished and walked away without wasting another second, while the three Tokubetsu Jonins jumped and disappeared in a flash.

* * *

 _ **Konoha Hospital-**_

He had just arrived from the Forest of Death, it took him almost three hours to make all the way through the forest and reach the village, at full speed and without taking a break. He still had so much energy that he quickly shook off his aching feet and ran straight to the hospital in a single stretch.

When the announcements were over, he went to the medical wing in search of Sakura and Sasuke. There, one of the less prejudiced medics told him that Kakashi had taken Sasuke back to the Konoha for some sort of treatment. Meanwhile, Sakura who had a concussion was still unconscious so they had transported her back to the village. From them, he realised that both his teammates were incapacitated in the hospital back in the village, so he immediately headed back to the village. He was hoping that he could ask Kakashi-sensei for some training since both Sasuke and Sakura were incapacitated.

As he was asking the counter for Sasuke's and Sakura's room, the lady at the counter told him no visitors. "WHAT…, NO VISITORS? ARE YOU KIDDING ME…?" He asked loudly.

The woman was giving him the usual disgusted look like the most of the villagers but she was trying to sound professional, "Those are the rules."

"OH, COME ON LADY..."

"Naruto, this is a hospital, keep it down." Kakashi walked out from the corner and spoke swiftly.

"KAKASHI-SENSEI, AM I GLAD TO SEE YOU? I GOTTA ASK YOU A FAVOR."

Kakashi answered softly, "Stop right there, I already know what you're going to ask…"

"You do…?"

"I do…! So, I've been looking for someone that can oversee your training."

"HOLD ON, WHY CAN'T YOU TRAIN ME?"

"I have other matters to handle; I don't have time to deal with you Naruto." Kakashi's answer dimmed Naruto's face, as the boy began sulking.

His excitement and energy waned as something clicked in his head, "Wait a minute, you're going to train Sasuke, aren't you?"

"Now, now, don't complain. I've found you an even better teacher than me." Kakashi replied in a diffusing tone.

"Who is it?"

"It is I." Naruto heard someone walk up behind him; he turned to see Ebisu, Konohamaru's private tutor standing proudly.

"Him…, this closet pervert is gonna teach me?" Naruto asked completely livid at the possibility of this guy teaching him.

"Such insolence…!" The new man exclaimed proudly.

"Of all the people you could have picked, you picked him? All it takes to defeat him is a harem jutsu and he's done." Naruto proclaimed out loud.

"Harem jutsu…?" Kakashi asked curiously.

Ebisu immediately came up from behind and locked Naruto in a chokehold and prevented him from speaking any further. Kakashi who saw this, smiled casually and spoke, "I didn't know you two were acquainted?"

"We're not." Naruto spoke while Ebisu simultaneously replied, "We go way back."

Naruto shook off the grip and stepped forward and asked, "I still don't get why it has to be him? I mean anybody else."

"Hey, if it hadn't been for Kakashi who asked me this favour, I would never consider training you." Ebisu shot back.

"Yeah, well then don't…"

"Hey, come on you two, let's calm down." Kakashi jumped in to diffuse the situation, "Naruto, listen well, I have to say that of three genins in squad seven you are the one whose basic skills that need the most work, that's what I want you to focus on this time around. No matter how many skills you master, the fundamentals are well, fundamentals, and yours could be improved. So if you want to get strong, then just be quiet and pay attention."

"Well then, Ebisu I'll leave him in your capable hands. Ja ne…" With that, Kakashi disappeared in a puff of smoke.

 _"Kakashi-sensei...?"_ Naruto mused hopelessly.

He noticed a few things in his conversation with Kakashi. One, Kakashi didn't even deny his accusation about pawning him off to Ebisu in order to exclusively train Sasuke. And two, he noticed the word 'this time around', normally it wouldn't have bothered him this much, but the way Kakashi said it, it almost seemed like Kakashi didn't really expect him to pass the next round and become a Chunin. With that, he kept his head down and dejectedly walked behind a rambling Ebisu, who he had completely tuned out.

* * *

 _ **Hotsprings-**_

"What in the world are we doing here? Are you gonna train me about how to take a bath?" Naruto asked annoyed by Ebisu's silence.

"Not quite, but it is part of your training."

"What exactly am I training for here?"

The Tokubetsu jonin grinned, "I am gonna teach you how to walk on water."

"You mean like this…?" With that, Naruto jumped up high and landed on water, as he stood on top of it without even trying.

Ebisu meanwhile had his jaw on the ground, "How…? How did you…? Kakashi told me…! He told me…"

Naruto walked forward glazing his feet on the surface of the water and he stepped on the stone pathway nearby the spring and he spoke dismissively, "You know what? I don't need your training; I'll train on my own."

Since Ebisu's pride was on the line, the special Jonin immediately tried to beg him and butter his reluctant student up, "Naruto, Naruto…, listen to me, I can teach you other things too, you know. For example, do you know the secret use of the shadow clone technique?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know…, memory feedback effect or something." Naruto once again replied dismissively.

Just as the Jonin was about to further nag the boy, the closet-pervert noticed a tall old man with long silver-white hair clad in a red kabuki suit sitting cross-legged beside the wooden walls of the bathhouse and peeping into the women's side of the bath through a hole in the wall.

Ebisu trying to be cool which he suspected would bring Naruto back to him, "Are you peeking in the women's bath old man? I will not allow any disreputable behaviour." And the jonin shot forward at full speed toward the old man.

The old man turned his head sideways viewing curiously with one eye, "Oh, please…"

And with that, the old man held a half tiger seal and a red toad appeared before him in a puff of smoke, the toad opened its mouth and its tongue shot forward and wrapped around Ebisu's midsection. Ebisu was readily lifted above the ground and was slammed headfirst into the ground. The toad withdrew its tongue as Ebisu was knocked out cold, the man who was now sitting above the toad spoke to the out cold Jonin, "What's the matter with you? Keep it down, do you wanna get us busted you, idiot?" With that, the old man once again went back to peeking on the women's bath, occasionally giggling like a shameless pervert.

Naruto walked back to downed Ebisu and asked, "Hey perv, you awake?"

A grin came to his face as he mused, _"One way to find out."_

"Hidden Finger Jutsu: One Thousand Years of Death…" And he gathered chakra in his banded fingers and slammed it into Ebisu's ass just like Kakashi had done to him during the bell test.

When he got no reaction, Naruto realised that Ebisu was out cold, he walked across the bridge and towards a giggling old man, "Okay, frogman, what was all that about? Who do you think you are?"

Jiraiya once again turned his head sideways a little with a smug grin, "I'm glad you asked. I'm the hermit of Mt Myōboku, the wise and immortal spirit, that's right; I'm Jiraiya, the Toad Sage…" Jiraiya finished with a one-legged pose and a victory sign.

Naruto walked closer, giving the old man a stern look and yelled, "I don't care who you are, pervy-sage." Meanwhile, the moment the women in the bathhouse heard the term 'pervy-sage' their warning lights went off and they all disappeared like ninjas. Jiraiya who noticed this looked like he was about to scream in absolute pain.

Jiraiya walked straight to Naruto and spoke while giving him a glare, "What's wrong with you?"

"You ruined my training with this fool, so you're gonna teach me that frog tongue technique!" Naruto demanded out loud.

"I thought you didn't want his help and was about to train on your own?" Jiraiya countered with a sly grin.

Naruto narrowed his eyes at Jiraiya, "That's beside the point, you're teaching me something."

"Forget it…" Jiraiya walked past Naruto, "I won't work with someone who has no respect for the art of sex." Jiraiya jumped on a metal pole nearby and used his chakra to gather wind and spiral it around him like a vortex and he used the wind's lift to jump away.

Naruto looked at rooftops only to see that man long gone, _"Where did he go? I don't care if he's a dirty old man, he's the real deal."_ And Naruto ran into the village in search of the pervert leaving Ebisu still out cold on the ground.

* * *

 _ **In the forest-**_

The sage named Jiraiya was leaning on a huge log while taking puffs of smoke from his pipe while watching the clouds thinking about nude women, every so often giggling like a teenage girl. Suddenly out of nowhere, shurikens came towards Jiraiya; the man immediately scurried away and hid behind the log that he was leaning on.

Naruto jumped on the log only to see a wooden doll where Jiraiya had hid behind, "Hmmm, substitution jutsu eh, not bad, old man." And Naruto ran away into the forest in search of Jiraiya.

Just as Naruto ran away, the wooden doll burst in a puff of smoke and Jiraiya appeared out of the 'henge'. Jiraiya smirked, "You'll have to be a lot smarter than that to outfox me, kid."

Naruto slowly emerged his head from behind the log giving a knowing look, "How about now…?"

"Ahhh…" Jiraiya screamed in shock, he couldn't believe that he was outfoxed.

Ten minutes later, both Jiraiya and Naruto were leaning against a tree and having peaches for lunch. Jiraiya got some peaches from a nearby farm and they were contesting on who can eat more peaches and finish their baskets first. Jiraiya was actually on a mission, he knew who Naruto was and more than that, he was testing if the kid could be his next apprentice.

Naruto stood up and claimed loudly, "You lose old man, I win." Jiraiya noticed the basket of fruits were empty.

"You're not so bad, kid. You've got some skills." Jiraiya admitted out loud.

Naruto being excited that someone recognised his talent, immediately asked being hopeful, "Does that mean you'll teach me?"

"You wanted to learn my Toad Summoning jutsu didn't you?" Jiraiya asked with a mischievous grin.

Naruto looked thoughtful, "Not the Toad summoning or whatever, I wanna learn how to control the frog so that it can use its tongue to thrash Ebisu again."

The Toad Sannin sweat dropped while giving the blonde a deadpanned look, "A toad can do many things and for the toad to do what you want it to do, you must learn how to summon it first."

"Okay…!" Naruto agreed not really aware of the science behind the jutsu. Jiraiya simply smiled at the boy's ignorance.

* * *

 _ **Mountain Falls (Outside Konoha)-**_

Jiraiya took Naruto to his favourite training spot outside of Konoha, the spot he usually came so that he can train as a genin.

"What is this place?" Naruto asked curiously.

Jiraiya replied nonchalantly, "This is training ground 43. This is the place I usually used to train when I was a genin. Of course, I was six years old back then, so I outgrew this training ground by the time I became a chunin."

"You were a genin at six?"

"Oh, yeah…, became Genin at six, Chunin at nine and Jonin at thirteen." Naruto gaped at the Sannin like he was a fish out of the water. The blonde-haired Jinchuriki couldn't believe it, it took him three attempts to even make genin and he was almost thirteen years old already, and by this time in life, this Jiraiya guy was already a Jonin, and he was still a measly genin.

"If I train with you, can I become Jonin quickly too?" Naruto's worry disappeared as he asked the sage excitedly.

"Maybe, but it's all actually up to you… Are you willing to train every day until your bones crack? Are you willing to train harder than the day before?" The sage worded the question carefully.

"Hell, yeah, believe it..."

With that, the man took the huge scroll that was clipped horizontally on his back and he placed it on the ground. Jiraiya opened it and said to Naruto and said, "Slice open your palm, write your name in blood on the next empty slot and then put your palm print with blood in the nearby slot." Jiraiya instructed in a step by step manner.

And once it was done, Jiraiya said, "Okay brat, I'll show you how it's done."

"These are the hand-seals, Boar, Dog, Bird, Monkey and Ram." Jiraiya quickly went through the hand-seals and then he bit his thumb drawing blood, he smeared his blood on the palm of his hand and he slammed his hand on the ground and shortly after that, there was a puff of smoke. When the smoke cleared, Jiraiya was standing above a large orange toad giving a victory pose with a stupid grin.

"Now you try it, kid."

"Great…!" The blonde jinchuriki exclaimed as he excitedly went through the hand signs, biting the tip of his thumb, drawing blood and slammed his hand on the ground. As his chakra travelled to the ground as the summoning seal structure spread on the ground, and there was a puff of smoke and when the smoke cleared, he could see a red with orange tadpole with a tail.

"WHAT, A TADPOLE? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" Naruto yelled out in anger.

"Hehehehe… Keep trying, kid." Jiraiya was struggling not to laugh as he saw the kid failing to summon a toad.

* * *

 _ **Three Hours Later-**_

Jiraiya was nowhere to be seen; in fact, the toad sage was at the bottom of the waterfalls, hiding in the bushes while peeping and occasionally giggling lecherously seeing the young girls in bikinis playing with a ball in the knee-deep water.

Meanwhile, Naruto was at the top of the valley, above the waterfalls, still trying desperately to summon a toad. Naruto slammed his bleeding hand on the ground and there was another puff of smoke, the smoke cleared and he saw another tadpole, this one was green and blue in colour. With that, around hundred tadpoles were summoned and still not one toad, although he did notice that his recent tadpoles were a bit bigger than the previous ones, so he assumed that maybe he was improving slowly.

He decided to get some rest, so he sat cross-legged on the ground and suddenly out of nowhere, there was another puff of smoke. When the smoke cleared, there was a toad with a green underside and purple marking around her mouth and at the back of her body. The top of her head was as though she was wearing a hair net with hair-rollers underneath it, giving her an 'old woman' look. She was also wearing two types of capes, a high-collared one and a simpler one atop the first one. It was Shima, also known as 'Ma', the Mother of the Toad Way, an elder toad from Mount Myōboku, one of the Two Great Sage Toads.

"Are you the one who's been summoning all the tadpoles?" Ma asked Naruto who was looking at the sage curiously, being a ninja he wasn't surprised to see someone appearing out of nowhere, coming through the smoke.

"Uh…huh…" Naruto nodded his head agreeing to the elder toad.

"What's your name, youngling?"

The blonde summoner smiled brightly as he answered, "I'm Naruto Uzumaki, I'm gonna be Hokage."

"Well, Naruto-chan, I'm Shima, you can call me, Ma." The elder sage introduced herself to the hyperactive knucklehead and continued, "These tadpoles are far too young to take care of themselves, so you shouldn't summon them, Naruto-chan."

Naruto closed his eyes and grinned with all his teeth visible to hide his embarrassment. The blonde realised that Ma wasn't angry at him, she was just happy that the tadpoles were okay, so he decided to be honest, "I've been trying to summon a toad, but I can't, every time I tried, only a tadpole came out."

"Can't summon? Didn't Jiraiya-chan teach you?" Ma asked curiously.

"He did…but, I kinda suck at it." The blonde replied nonchalantly.

Ma gauged the boy carefully; from the way he spoke, it was certain to her that the boy didn't think highly of himself and that the boy lacked confidence in his own abilities. However, the thing that surprised her was the fact that despite the boy not having confidence in his skills, he did smile all the time as he put on a brave face.

"Is that so? Let's see what you're doing wrong…"

Naruto understood what Ma was prompting him to do, and so he went through the hand-seals and he used the blood to summon yet another tadpole, "See, I suck at it."

Ma immediately sent the tadpole back again because she saw the problems, "Naruto-chan, apart from the motions, you're doing it all wrong."

"Huh…?"

"Why do we make hand-seals before every jutsu?" Ma asked the boy.

The blonde demon container spoke unsurely, "Something about shaping or moulding chakra."

"Good…!" Ma exclaimed and Naruto glowed at the approval, finally, he was being taught by someone who actually commended what he did rather than calling him stupid, "The hand-seals mould the chakra that you're pulling out from your core, without the moulded chakra your jutsus won't even take form."

Ma hopped towards Naruto and she placed her webbed-foot over Naruto's chest, just an inch to the left of his heart, right on top of his chakra core and she spoke, "Close your eyes, Naruto-chan. Close your eyes and feel the burning chakra inside you."

Naruto associated the spot Ma's webbed-limb touched his chest with her words and he focused on feeling the chakra inside him. Since, a certain time-traveller's manipulation of timely events, his chakra core was very much active, of course, he didn't know that. Atop that, having the chakra reserves easily the size of a lake; it wasn't very difficult to feel it, the moment he focused within him, he saw it, it was like a fiery torch that warmed his body and he felt energised just by feeling its presence within him.

"I feel it, I feel it…" Naruto opened his eyes and he excitedly yelled out loud.

"Very good, Naruto-chan..." Ma encouraged the boy, "Now, hold Boar-seal and pull as much as you can from your core."

"Boar…" Naruto energetically held Boar hand-seal and tugged on his chakra core as hard as he could.

"Now, go to the next seal and hold it..." Ma instructed carefully.

"Dog…" Naruto yelled as he held the dog-seal.

Ma asked curiously, "Did you feel your chakra move inside you."

Naruto shook his head as he didn't notice it, "Uh…no…"

"It's okay…! Try the next hand-seal."

"Bird…" This time he was carefully watching for a change and just as soon as he held the bird-seal, the chakra he had pulled from his core and was holding in his centre, the chakra rotated clockwise.

"I felt it, I felt the chakra spin!" Naruto exclaimed loudly.

" _Ma is awesome. I can actually understand what she's trying to teach. If I trained under her, I'll be strong in no time."_ The blonde knucklehead mused rather happily.

"Very good, Naruto-chan... Every time you hold a hand-seal, your chakra moulds itself a bit differently. Keep going; go through all the hand seals like this."

"Monkey…, Ram…" He spoke as he went through the hand-seals.

Ma seeing that Naruto was making progress, she further instructed, "Use your blood and push all the chakra you gathered in one push."

Naruto did as told and slammed his right hand on the ground while pushing all the chakra through his hand as best as he could, there was a puff of smoke and when the smoke cleared he saw a tadpole, this one a little bigger than all the one before but still a tadpole.

"OH, COME ON…" Naruto gave out a frustrated yell.

Meanwhile, Ma sent back the tadpole yet again and hopped back to Naruto with a soft smile, "You did everything right, Naruto-chan. Until you pushed your chakra out for the summoning, by which point most of your chakra went back into your system, only a fraction of it was actually used for the summoning seal structure."

"Your control over your own immense chakra reserves is marginal, at best. You aren't effectively channelling your chakra. I think you should try using both your hands for the summoning. You have trouble using up all the chakra that you're moulding via one hand, so maybe you should try using both your hands, meaning more chakra can be channelled out. You're right-handed, so place your left hand over your right hand and channel as much chakra as you can through both your hands when you summon." Ma advised and he looked thoughtful.

Naruto sighed with a whine, "Okay, I'll give that a try."

With that, he slowly went through the hand-seals and each time he gathered a bit more chakra and felt it moulding inside him. And finally, just as Ma had said, he smeared his blood as he placed his left hand on top of his right hand and in one push, he summoned, "Summoning jutsu…"

He felt more chakra leaving his body than ever before, but he wasn't very hopeful of the technique working now. The summoning seal structure spread outwards on the ground and there was a puff of smoke. But when the smoke cleared, he saw two small toads in the middle of what seemed like a petty brawl. One of the toads was a young orange toad with purple markings around his eyes, mouth and stomach. The other one was a young yellow toad with orange marking around his eyes and mouth; it also had two markings curving inwards on his stomach.

"Gamakichi-chan, Gamatatsu-chan, what have I told you two about fighting?" Ma sternly disciplined the two young toads and pulled them apart.

The orange toad named Gamakichi was quick at pointing a hand at the other toad and claimed, "He started it."

Ma was quick to neutralise it, "I don't care who started it, you're brothers, and brothers don't fight with each other. You're the older one Gamakichi-chan, you should know better."

Gamakichi immediately apologized to the elder toad, "I'm sorry, Ma."

"Gamakichi-chan, Gamatatsu-chan, meet Naruto-chan, he's our new summoner."

Gamakichi was the first one to say hello with a friendly hop on the head, "Yo, I'm Gamakichi…"

"I'm Gamatatsu…" The small yellow toad hopped up as Naruto held his hands together for the toad to jump on.

Ma watched as the two young toads tickled Naruto as the cheery blonde boy kept giggling out loud playing with his new friends. Shima was proud of her new summoner, she realised that the boy wasn't incapable; he just lacked the knowledge of the basics and the control to employ it. When taught properly, Shima understood that he picked up things very quickly.

Ma also sensed the boy's chakra and she felt the warmth of it, she wondered how; she for the world couldn't understand how a boy holding the tailed beast of hatred inside of him could be this light-hearted. In any case, she was sure of one thing, this new summoner was one to watch out for.

* * *

 _ **That Night-**_

Hiruzen was sitting in his seat while laxly smoking his pipe and enjoying the silence of the Hokage's tower after a long day's work. It was raining outside, the cold made his office seem very comfortable.

Suddenly, Hiruzen felt a vibration in the air, he went stiff as he pinpointed the source to the ledge outside the window, the moment he identified the position of the intruder the Sandaime Hokage relaxed into his seat once again. Only a handful of people in the village had the balls to try and sneak up on the Sandaime Hokage. One was Kakashi Hatake, the Jonin used to do it until the man matured to the point of using the door while preoccupied with his infamous orange book. The second one was Naruto Uzumaki, the boy would do it without caring about the consequences and Hiruzen simply liked the blonde knucklehead too much to punish him. And three, it was his perverted student who he hadn't seen in a while.

Hiruzen knew that it couldn't be Naruto seeing that whoever it was that came didn't alert his ANBU guards on approach who he would have sensed move if they had been startled. Kakashi was out of the village and even if he was here, the Jonin would have simply jumped into the room if he did come through the window. It had to be Jiraiya and he guessed correctly, "Jiraiya, get in here!" A moment later, the silver-haired Sannin was standing in front of the Sandaime Hokage, the sudden lightning in the sky that lit the dark room and the cold wind blowing into the office that fluttered Jiraiya's cloak made the Sannin seem ominous.

"Sensei…!"

"Took your time getting here, I see?" Hiruzen remarked casually.

"It took you long enough to notice me, sensei. I practically had to move around to make my presence evident. I suggest you position a stronger sensory type ANBU on guard."

"Your internal security tips are always advised, Jiraiya." Hiruzen mocked his student.

Jiraiya smirked at the Hokage and spoke lightly, "It's good to see you, sensei."

"Likewise, Raiya…" Hiruzen replied warmly.

Jiraiya was one of Hiruzen's greatest regrets; he hadn't trained his eccentric student like he had trained his favourites. While he gave special attention to Orochimaru for he was impressed by his talents and to Tsunade for she was her teachers' granddaughter and grandniece, he never paid much attention to Jiraiya. Jiraiya was his greatest student, the one who didn't need his help to become stronger, the one who broke past his expectations and became one of the most powerful ninjas on the planet all on his own. He was both proud of Jiraiya and at the same time ashamed that he wasn't a part of Jiraiya's growth as a ninja and as a student. He always made time for Jiraiya after he saw his mistakes as a teacher. His attempts to reconcile with Jiraiya were one of the things that drove his favourite student away from them all.

"I expected you here a few weeks ago?"

"I had to make a side trip to Rice Country for some valuable Intel." Jiraiya's tone was completely serious.

Sensing the seriousness of Jiraiya's statement Hiruzen listened carefully as Jiraiya continued on, "Orochimaru is planning something big. I don't know what he's up to, but he's on the move. I heard some weird rumours about him, so I sent some of my spies to collect Intel and turns out some of those rumours aren't exactly wrong."

"What exactly did you learn…?" Hiruzen asked surprised by Jiraiya's interest.

"Apparently, there is a new Hidden Village that's come to existence; they call it Otogakure, the Village Hidden in the Sound."

"Yes, I know. We have a genin team participating in the Chunin exams, one of them even made it to the final round. What about it?"

"My contacts found out pieces of Intel and we pieced it together and came to the conclusion that the village is led by Orochimaru. To check the validity of our summation, I went to meet the Rice Country Daimyo's youngest estranged brother in secret. According to the man, Orochimaru came and met with the Rice Country Daimyo about two years back requesting for funding." Jiraiya surmised to the aged Hokage.

Hiruzen stood up and started gazing through the windows towards the village. After a long minute's silence, finally, Hiruzen asked, "How do you think Orochimaru convinced the Rice Daimyo to fund him? That man, Daichi, is one of the most inflexible Daimyos I have ever had the luck of negotiating with. He rejected every single one of our trade treaties and refused our ninja protection."

Jiraiya walked closer to Hiruzen's side and replied, "Daichi, the Rice Daimyo is a vile man. We know that he is publicly funding and running several flesh-trading, slave-trafficking and prostitution ring within his territories. It won't be a stretch to imagine Orochimaru making some other form of an offer to the Daimyo in turn for letting him set up a Hidden village."

"Thought as much…! What else did you found out?" The Sandaime asked his former student.

"According to the Daimyo's brother, one of the Daimyo's personal guards has made several trips to the Hidden Sand. For what purpose they went to the Hidden Sand, that I don't know, but in any case, I'm a hundred per cent positive that there is something large afoot. We have to be careful, sensei." Jiraiya added in his report to the Sandaime.

Another lightning rumbled in the sky above, the flash of light overshadowed the two figures in the office. Hiruzen took another puff of smoke from his pipe and replied, "I concur, we have to be very careful. Anything else…?"

"Do you know where Kakashi is?" Jiraiya's serious tone vanished and now it was merely uncaring.

Hiruzen was surprised by Jiraiya's sudden change in topic, "Why do you ask?"

"I just want to know."

"He took young Sasuke to the mountains for special training a few hours ago. You must have heard; Sasuke Uchiha has been branded by the curse mark. Orochimaru's handiwork in the Forest of the Death…" Hiruzen remarked casually.

"Oh, I heard!" Jiraiya spoke more than a little vindictively, "And Kakashi's job was also to prepare Naruto so that I can take over his training when I get back. Last time I checked, it was the Jonin-sensei's job to help improve his students further and correct if the students have problems with the fundamentals."

"What happened…?" Hiruzen asked curiously.

Jiraiya's tenor changed into sarcasm, "Oh nothing, I met the kid and told him how to do the toad summoning jutsu. It took him a while, but when Ma's stepped in to teach, he learned how to summon almost instantly."

"The kid lacks the basic knowledge in the fundamental skills of a ninja. Come on, sensei. A genin who doesn't know these things, why did even you let him pass?" Jiraiya asked concernedly.

Hiruzen simply turned back and began staring at the village once again, "It isn't that simple, Raiya. You're only looking at his safety, I can't do that, I have to look out for his state of mind too. If I hadn't stood by Iruka's decision to let him pass, it would have broken him for sure. I'm the Hokage, I can't be partial to anyone the entire village is my family, but I have to do what's best for everyone."

"I'm not asking you to be partial, just why did you put him under Kakashi if you knew that he would just ignore obvious flaws and do nothing about it?" The Sannin asked logically.

Hiruzen took another puff of smoke from his pipe and took it in his hand as he replied, "Because, Kakashi needs the genin team more than the team needs him."

"Oh, no, not this again... Please don't tell me this was for Kakashi's sake."

Hiruzen was quick to reply, "No, not at all. The reason for team 7 is twofold. One, Kakashi was reverting back to his isolated state of mind back from his ANBU days, and two, the council was pushing me to place Sasuke under Kakashi, due to Kakashi's adeptness in using the Sharingan. And Naruto wasn't even supposed to be in the team until Iruka authorised Naruto's graduation but since it gave him hope, it seemed cruel to take that away, so I stood by Iruka's decision to let Naruto pass. If Iruka hadn't done that, I would have called you back a long time ago and I would have ordered you to take Naruto under your wing."

"But that didn't happen now, did it? Sensei, can't you see what's happening here?" Jiraiya asked annoyedly.

"I see, Jiraiya. Kakashi is training the one with the most initial talent while ignoring the one with the most potential. The same thing I did as a teacher." The aged Hokage agreed with a heavy sigh as he took his seat.

"What do you want me to do? You clearly want something of me, Jiraiya. What do you want?"

Jiraiya walked forward and placed both his hands on the Hokage's desk and gave his teacher a knowing look as he spoke carefully, "Given the circumstances and what it might turn out to be, I think you can guess what I'm asking."

"If I do what you want as a favour and if I postdate it, will that satisfy you?" Hiruzen asked his student tiredly as he understood Jiraiya's intent.

Jiraiya's answer was instant, "Yes…"

"But if the council inquires…" Hiruzen began but was rudely interrupted by Jiraiya.

Jiraiya replied confidently yet quietly, "I asked for it and I'll defend it."

Hiruzen gave a nod and replied thoughtfully, "Done!"

With that, Jiraiya simply walked towards the window as he spoke, "Nice seeing you, sensei." And the silver-haired Sannin disappeared within a moment's notice.

* * *

 **Hey people, another chapter finished, hope you like it. Let me know if you have any suggestions, and criticisms are also welcome.**

 **Thank you…**


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